


Never Say Never

by forthegreatergood



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Anal Sex, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-18 01:33:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 81,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3551099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hal doesn't get along with Bruce, and Bruce doesn't get along with Hal.  Just ask either of them.</p><hr/><p>“You know, if you’d just let me fly, I’d be too distracted figuring out how fast the batplane really is to keep trying to have a conversation with you,” Hal pointed out.</p><p>Batman snorted. “You’d be trying to do both, which is precisely why I’m never letting you fly it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All characters property of DC/Warner Bros. and their respective parent companies.
> 
> Chapters beta-read where noted. Please post any noticed errors in the comments, and they'll get fixed.

Hal cracked his knuckles and looked around, taking in the complete and utter absence of anything of interest. Batman finished packing up his equipment and hefted the case onto his shoulder.

“I could--” Hal got halfway through his offer to help before being cut off.

“No.”

“Have you thought about what I said before, at least?” Hal asked.

“Yes.”

“And?” he prodded hopefully.

“No.”

“Come on,” Hal said, spreading his hands. 

He was pretty sure the flat, blank stare he got would have been flat and blank even without the cowl. The drought-stricken prairie they were smack in the middle of was more expressive than Batman’s face.

“No.” Batman didn’t even sound like he’d considered it. He swept past Hal up the ramp, the cape snapping around his ankles.

“Which of the two of us does this for a living?” Hal demanded.

“No.”

“If you said yes, you could spend the trip home brooding at a computer screen,” Hal pointed out. “Think of it. Just hours and hours of uninterrupted glowering at electronics. You could cram ten percent more paranoia into your day if you let me fly this baby.”

“No.”

Hal paused to look over the engines one more time before he followed Batman up the ramp. It wasn’t that the batplane--and he’d discovered that Batman absolutely _hated_ it when he called it that--was uniquely great. He’d flown more powerful jets, fancier jets, jets that made his fingers itch with the need to wrap around the controls. Hell, there was a new one from Wayne Enterprises sitting in the hangar at Ferris Aircraft just waiting for him to test it out that could do at least half of what this bird could do and had a built-in minibar, and it was meant to be nothing more than a rich man’s toy. Hal was a sucker for aesthetics, though, and he was an even bigger sucker for things he’d been told weren’t for him. Batman acting like he didn’t rate the pilot’s seat made him want it that much more.

“Please?” he asked morosely. Batman snapped the case into its locker and carefully tightened the webbing around it. He double-checked the locker’s latches, and Hal reflected that at least he didn’t have to worry about careless mistakes when Batman was at the controls.

“No.” 

Not even a flicker of difference in Batman’s tone, either. Hal sighed and buckled himself into one of the passenger seats while Batman ran through the pre-flight checks.

“Are you just mad because we flew all the way out here over a false alarm? Because I don’t know about you, but I had a hot date, and I’m definitely not getting a second shot after standing her up,” Hal said.

“No.” Batman paused for a heartbeat. “Why didn’t you call her and cancel when you knew you had a mission?”

“Because I’m an idiot," Hal grunted. “Why do you even have these?” 

He gestured at the two rows of sparsely-padded but extremely solid seats lining the bulkhead. Batman, as far as he’d been able to figure out, worked alone whenever Superman hadn’t roped him into helping them out.

“Rescue missions.”

“Oh.” Well, that made a certain amount of sense, he supposed. Hal’s brow furrowed as he tried to imagine Batman doing something as non-punching-people-oriented as a rescue mission. “Those come up often?”

“More often than I’d like.”

Hal started to nod, then stopped short. “Wait. Like, more often than you want to take a break from delivering dumpsters full of purse-snatchers to Gotham Central or more often than you want to see people needing to be rescued?”

That earned him a glare. Or at least it felt like a glare, between the slightly-pursed lips and the two extra seconds of frosty silence before Batman answered.

“The latter.”

“I’d have figured Superman would have picked up that sort of job,” Hal offered, tightening his harness. He didn’t really need the restraints when he had the ring, but he also didn’t want to give Batman an excuse to scold him. And he wouldn’t really blame him; Hal’s favorite flight instructor had a partial bridge because of unsecured items in the cabin during evasive maneuvers. She’d understandably been a bit of a tight-ass about locking down luggage and passengers, even in green zones, as a result.

“He doesn’t do multiple passengers.”

“Oh.” Hal closed his eyes and listened to the whine of the engines firing up. The jet’s interior was even more austere than most of the military planes he’d flown on, but there was still a certain sense of styling to it that he couldn’t put his finger on. Spartan chic, he thought. The coldness of the design made him want to touch it just to make its owner twitch. His eyes popped back open. “Wait, does that mean Superman calls you when he needs people ferried back to safety?”

“Essentially.”

“Superman calls you,” Hal repeated, trying to get his head around it. The faint thrum of power coursing through the jet seeped into his bones and almost made him smile in spite of his irritation at not being in the right seat.

“Yes.”

The takeoff was smooth but bloodless, and something in his gut rebelled at the ease of it. He’d have the throttles open by now, have them both roaring into the star-studded blackness of the open sky. He figured that was at least part of why he wanted to fly it so damn bad; Batman was perfectly competent as a pilot, but his flying style was stultifying. An upgrade to just ‘conservative’ would be an improvement. Hal had never really seen what the batplane could do. He dug his fingers into his knees at the thought of getting his hands on the yoke and shifted restlessly.

“Like, on his phone? Just whips out his iPhone and picks ‘Batman’ out of his contact list and hits call?” Hal asked. “And you pick up?”

Mostly he wanted to needle Batman out of boredom, but there was definitely a tiny part of Hal’s mind that refused to believe he didn’t just magically pop up whenever he was needed and could humiliate them the most effectively. Hal figured it was the same part that was unshakably convinced that coffee picked the worst possible mornings to run out, crosswalks could be convinced to turn green faster if he pushed the button repeatedly, and his hair deliberately did ridiculous things prior to dates with the girls he most wanted to impress.

“He uses a communicator, but the core concept is the same, yes. And only if I’m not doing something more important.”

“So you basically have superhero walkie-talkies.” Hal frowned. “And you actually have a personal scale of things that are more important than whatever Superman could be buzzing you about. That’s a thing, with you.”

“Yes.”

Hal caught a flare of irritation lurking below the clipped tone, and he smirked before it occurred to him that Superman had never mentioned any of this. That seemed like an important omission. “Why does he get to call you and I have to put up a huge green batsignal and hope you see it?”

“You don’t. He sees it and calls me.”

“I...really?” Hal rubbed his forehead.

“Yes.” 

“Why didn’t I get a communicator?” Hal grumbled.

“You’d have to ask him.”

“You could hook me up with one.”

“No.”

“Come on. What if I need you to glare at something really intently before calling me a dumbass?” Hal asked. He was a little proud of himself at how serious he’d managed to sound.

“You don’t.”

“Okay,” Hal said slowly, his lips pursing. “What if _you_ need _me_ to come take care of something that doesn’t respond to being glared at really intently or thrown out a window?”

“I’d call Superman.”

“Hey!” Hal gave him a dirty look, then thought he caught the barest wisp of a smile.

“Or Wonder Woman.”

“Wonder Woman has a communicator,” Hal said flatly. There was injury, and then there was insult. Diana had pitched her tent in DC and established a Themysciran consulate. All she had to do to figure out what was up was ask whichever aide looked the most harried. If anyone needed a communicator, it was the guy who routinely spent two weeks in space and had to hop on the internet to figure out who’d made it to the next round on _The Bachelor_.

“No, Diana has an iPhone.”

“And your number.”

“Yes.”

“You know, if you’d just let me fly, I’d be too distracted figuring out how fast the batplane really is to keep trying to have a conversation with you,” Hal pointed out.

Batman snorted. “You’d be trying to do both, which is precisely why I’m never letting you fly it.”

“Never say never, Bats.” Hal shot a grin at the back of his head. He was reasonably sure there were enough reflective surfaces in the cockpit that he’d been seen. Hal laced his fingers together and looped them behind his head. “Never say never.”


	2. Chapter 2

‘Never’ turned out to be three weeks later, and Hal thought maybe he could have lived with it really being never.

“How’s he doing?” he asked tightly. He didn’t dare risk a look back over his shoulder from the cockpit, and his imagination helpfully supplied a picture of Superman in the middle of an impossibly-huge pool of Kryptonian blood with Batman still grimly trying to stanch his wounds.

“Focus, Lantern.” Batman’s whipcrack of an order was all the update he needed.

Hal took a deep breath and let it back out. The jet handled like a dream, and it was even faster than he’d hoped. Short of someone having a teleporter they’d forgotten to mention, this was the quickest they were going to get anywhere on-planet during a surgical procedure.

“At least tell me you got the kryptonite out of him,” Hal pleaded.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Batman growled.

“Give me an estimate here, B. Something.” Hal willed the small white dot on the screen to get closer faster and tried to ignore the hiss of pain coming from the cabin behind him.

“I’ve removed eighty percent of the kryptonite. I’ll have the rest out by the time we touch down. He should recover with three days if we can just get him to the fortress.” Batman said it like he was reciting baseball stats, and Hal swallowed. So that’s what worry sounded like coming from someone who dressed up like a bat and jumped off skyscrapers as a hobby.

“How do you--”

“ _Lantern_.”

There was no arguing with him this time, and Hal lapsed into a silence punctuated only by Superman’s ragged breathing and the sharp, metallic _plink_ of every newly-extracted meteorite sliver being dropped into a lead case. They’d expected the explosion, not least because someone had helpfully called in a threat before detonating it. Flash and Diana had cleared the area around the estimated blast-radius. At Batman’s insistence, J’onn had hung back and coordinated with the first responders, and when Hal had three brain cells to spare, he was going to ask someone what the hell that had all been about. 

The kryptonite embedded in the bomb... now _that_ had been a surprise. 

Hal chewed his lip and almost wished Batman had been able to persuade Diana to fly them. She’d been just about ready to tear something in half once the trouble Superman was in had really registered, and hunting down the party or parties responsible was sounding pretty good about now. Instead he was stuck here pouring everything the jet had into closing the distance between a critically-injured friend and medical care and trying to ignore the triage happening directly behind him. 

He wasn’t entirely surprised to find that the batplane had the location of Superman’s secret arctic ice-palace programmed into the nav computer. He desperately wanted to ask if that meant that Batman was positive they could get him inside once they got there, but he had to assume the answer to that one was yes. It didn’t seem to be the sort of detail Batman would overlook, no matter how nuts they were all going.

Hal’s shoulders tightened. It hadn’t occurred to him until they were already in the air and screaming toward the Arctic Circle. It had probably occurred to Batman roughly two seconds after he and Superman had started working together. Not that Hal had any clue where else to go. It wasn’t exactly like they could just load him into an ambulance and take him to Metropolis General. What was an earth hospital going to do for an alien? Hal’s whole spine stiffened when he heard Superman take a deep, obviously painful breath.

His voice was hoarse and barely more than a loud whisper. “If I don’t--”

“You will,” Batman snapped, cutting him off.

“Just promise me you’ll tell her, Bruce,” Superman breathed.

“You’re going to be fine.” 

Another metallic rattle told Hal that Batman somehow had managed to extract a piece of kryptonite in the middle of that, and Superman groaned.

“How is he?” Hal demanded. He imagined Superman flatlining and could practically hear the beep from a non-existent heart monitor.

“He needs the fortress’s solar generators.”

“I already knew that,” Hal said.

“Just try not to crash into a glacier when we get there,” Batman retorted. Hal heard another _plink_ , saw one of the monitors light up, and took a deep breath.

“Are you still pulling shrapnel out of him?” he asked as calmly as he could.

“Well, I’m not going to stop just to argue with you.”

“Okay, yeah, I get that. But I think you’re going to need to stop for a shitload of turbulence,” Hal told him. “And, you know, secure him and yourself and anything really sharp that I don’t need flying around the cabin with someone who already needs an ICU.”

“Cut speed and engage the stabilizers.” Batman at least didn’t sound panicked, which was reassuring. Then again, Hal could picture him casually informing everyone that the world was going to end, so it wasn’t as reassuring as it could have been.

“The--?”

“Triangular white button above the altimeter.”

“Got it,” Hal said, his eyes locking on the small white button in a recess above the instrument panel.

There were, in fact, enough reflective surfaces that Hal could see a reflection of Batman doing as he’d asked even as he scrambled to do as Batman had asked.

* * *

Hal snapped awake and then bit back a few choice obscenities when his back spasmed. He blinked in the bright light reflecting off an ice wall and realized that he’d fallen asleep slouched in his weird alien chair. He couldn’t tell if Kryptonians had absolutely no sense of ergonomics whatsoever or if he’d managed to pass out in the one chair in the entire place that was the intergalactic equivalent of uncomfortable waiting-room furniture. Hal scanned as much of the room as he could look at directly. Batman was still fussing with the generator’s projection panels. He couldn’t have been out that long, then.

“What time is it?” Hal asked, shielding his eyes blearily.

“Eight-hundred hours. Eastern time.”

Hal did the math and cleared his throat. Nine hours. No wonder he felt like he needed a gallon of water, a hot meal, and a chiropractor.

“Why’d you let me sleep that long?” He tried to ask the question around the yawn that took over halfway through it, and he figured he’d probably gotten at least enough of it across to earn the paint-stripping glare he could all but _feel_ through the back of his head. Hal dug the heels of his palms into his eyes and tried to rub the grit out of them.

“So,” he said instead of waiting for an answer, “your name’s Bruce?”

The vaguely Batman-shaped silhouette on the wall paused for all of a second before Bruce went back to whatever he’d been doing. Fiddling with output meters, Hal supposed. Bruce hadn’t been kidding when he’d said the solar generators in Superman’s base would do the job. He’d pulled on goggles and a full face-guard before he’d started fine-tuning the things.

“Yes.” It sounded like it cost him to admit it, and Hal almost sympathized with him. The stunt Bruce had pulled when they’d first met had given him Hal’s first name and occupation, though, and the conviction that Bruce could quote Hal’s credit report and mother’s maiden name at him by now kept Hal from feeling too sorry for him. It hardly put them on even footing in terms of personal information.

“After family, or did your parents just pick the most grandpa-sounding name they could find?” Hal asked. The box of kryptonite shards was sitting on a workbench, safely latched, and the alien medical equipment the Fortress’s systems had rolled out when they’d gotten inside was beeping gently instead of making the god-awful whooping noise that had fired up as soon as Superman had crossed the threshold. All seemed to be reasonably well. Hal yawned again and stretched until his back cracked.

“Asks the man named Harold, without the slightest hint of irony.”

“At least it’s not Walt?” Hal said, wincing. There was a reason he went by Hal.

His only answer was a grunt, and Hal sighed and tried again. “You said he’ll be back in fighting shape after three days of this, right?”

“No, I said he’d recover after three days of this,” Bruce corrected. “Don’t underestimate how dangerous kryptonite is to him.”

Hal rubbed his eyes again. The glare was enough that just closing them didn’t accomplish much. 

“You just gonna crash here half the week, then?” Hal asked. “I can probably stash the jet at work if I let on like it’s a client’s and come back for you, but three days would be, uh, pushing it a little. Most of my coworkers are pretty sharp, and the boss likes her paperwork existent and properly-filed.”

“No,” Bruce said flatly. 

“Well, you can’t leave it out there unless you can go without it until global warming really gets in gear, and I didn’t see a hangar around here,” Hal pointed out. “Unless you’re planning on asking Superman very politely to heat-vision it out of the twenty feet of snow it’ll be under by then, anyway. Which, yeah, I guess he would probably do, seeing as it’s you.”

“No, I’m not staying,” Bruce clarified. “The Fortress’s systems are designed to take care of him. They’re set up to notify me via the communicator if there’s anything they can’t do themselves.”

Hal considered the possibility that he’d just misheard him, then rejected it. “You’re not leaving him here alone.”

“There’s nothing more to be done, and the Fortress’s AI gets... difficult about visitors when he’s injured,” Bruce sighed. “If past exposures are anything to judge by, he’ll sleep through all but the last five or ten percent of his recuperation period anyway.”

“You cannot seriously be proposing that we leave someone who almost died of his injuries alone and unattended for three days,” Hal snarled, his stomach tightening.

“Feel free to stay and take a plasma blast or two to the face,” Bruce said, shrugging. “Presumably your ring’s still charged enough to deal with three days of an aggressive alien military installation trying to keep you away from the unconscious being whose welfare is its sole responsibility?”

Hal turned to scowl at him, then squinted into the glare and sank back down reluctantly. “That’s _me_. I’ve got an alien power ring. They’re not going to read you as a threat, are they? Especially if you ditch your gear.”

“I think you being a member of the Lantern Corps gets you something of a pass, actually,” Bruce told him. “The defenses that came online when you started twitching in your sleep were on their stun setting. It hasn’t gone for non-lethal with me since I broke the anti-gravity plates it used the first time I had to drag him back here.”

“You really know how to make friends and influence people, don’t you?” Hal asked. Leave it to Batman to get into a fight with a security system that had a memory and the capacity to learn.

“It was that or watch him bleed out,” Bruce retorted, bristling.

Hal sighed. “So that’s it? We just pack up and leave? He calls us when he’s ready to go?”

“Once I’m satisfied that the protocols are all running correctly, and when he’s conscious,” Bruce corrected. “But yes, essentially.”

“Diana’s going to kick our asses,” Hal said.

“In a metaphorical way, yes. It can’t be avoided.” The shadow on the wall shrugged again. “If it’s any comfort, she’d do the same thing in our place, and you’d likely be about as understanding in hers.”

“You know, it’s not really a requirement that you be as big a dick as you can all the time,” Hal said. “I promise, nobody’s gonna make you turn in your cowl if you chill out a little.”

His eyes flicked to the barely-dressed figure glowing under the spotlights, and he hoped Bruce was right. If the Fortress had been... built? left behind?... to take care of Superman, they could probably trust it to do the job. It still felt like abandoning him. When he had to look away or risk burning his retinas, his gaze settled on Bruce, and he noticed the slump in his shoulders and the slack in his posture. He hadn’t been sure Bruce could actually get tired, but he supposed this answered that question.

“Anyway, I’m flying home.”

Bruce tilted his head, then went back to scrutinizing some readout Hal couldn’t make out around the halo of artificial sunlight.

“Duly noted,” Bruce said. He sounded slightly perplexed, but Hal had been expecting anger--Bruce had to be just as frustrated as he was--so he’d take perplexed over that any day of the week. “If you stop in Central City, the Flash can update everyone else on Superman’s condition.”

Hal barely managed to smother a laugh. Well, that explained the lack of anger, then.

“I’m flying _us_ home,” he clarified.

Bruce snapped back to attention, his shoulders and spine straightening in a way that Hal had learned to read as ‘highly irritated.’ 

“No.”

“When’s the last time you slept?” Hal asked. “You know, just out of curiosity.”

When the silence stretched out to for what felt like an eternity, Hal thought Bruce had simply elected not to answer him. It wouldn’t be the first time, and Hal still wasn’t sure how to interpret the non-response. Bruce pretending not to hear him? Bruce just ignoring the fact that he’d been asked a question?

“Twenty-eight hours ago.”

Hal nodded to himself. Apparently this non-response, at least, was due to Bruce realizing that the answer was going to sound a little insane by normal-people standards.

He slipped his hands behind his head and leaned back in the chair. “Okay, yeah. So.”

“It’s immaterial,” Bruce muttered.

“Uh-huh,” Hal said, rolling his eyes. “I’m not even going to ask what the hell’s been going on in the past more-than-a-goddamned-day that was so important you couldn’t find time to take a nap. Knowing you, I’d regret it as soon as I heard the answer. But, assuming you’re sticking to your biologically-normal human being story, it’s officially no longer a request, Bruce. Tonight’s already put one of my friends in the Kryptonian version of a hospital. You’re dead on your feet, and Diana might actually kill me if I bailed now and you plowed that glorified MiG into Greenland on the way back to civilization. I can either fly the jet, or I can tow it home using the ring. Your choice.”

Hal thought it was testament to how tired Bruce must really have been that that was the end of the argument.


	3. Chapter 3

Hal coasted low over the soot-stained rooftops until he found the slightly darker shadow he’d been looking for. He wondered if it would be worth it to ask how Gotham managed to have so much light pollution without actually illuminating anything. It had almost as much as Metropolis; when Hal was coming in high enough, the only way to tell the difference between the bright patches on the ground was the color of the light. Where Metropolis’s spotlights and street lamps let people see things, Gotham’s somehow just threw more of its landscape into shadow. Hal doubted it was a deliberate choice on the city planners’ parts, but at the same time, it was hard to believe such a large and persistent mistake had slipped by that many people for that long.

He circled around the roof. Bruce didn’t look like he was about to spring off in hot pursuit. If it weren’t for the binoculars, he’d suspect Bruce had just picked an odd place to meditate.

“So, who are we spying on tonight?” Hal asked, dropping lightly to the rooftop.

Bruce didn’t stir from his position, and Hal wondered if he’d picked up on his presence earlier or just had ice water in his veins. He wouldn’t be surprised by either at this point. Bruce shot a pointed look at his ring, and Hal grudgingly dimmed the glow. There were times when he wasn’t sure Bruce understood that the whole point of being a superhero was to be out there, visibly being a superhero.

“We aren’t spying on anyone. I am observing a known arms dealer, and you are leaving,” Bruce said coolly.

“Make me.” Hal grinned at him and sat down.

“Why are you here?” Bruce grunted, ignoring the taunt.

“How ballistic, exactly, did you go on Superman for letting your first name slip?” Hal asked. He rattled a bag at Bruce. “Peanut?”

“What, exactly, is prompting that question?” Bruce returned. He didn’t bother lowering his binoculars this time. “And please do not leave shells all over the roof.”

“Because it’ll give away the location of your stalker-nest?”

“Because people live here, and it’s disrespectful.”

Hal blinked at him, then sighed. “He checked in with me before he even went home. Told me he trusted me, and he’s sure you trust me, but it wasn’t his secret to share, and he hopes I’ll respect that. So, what did you do? Leave a note written in pig’s blood nailed to the front door of the Fortress with a batarang when I wasn’t looking?”

“With a what?” Bruce asked. He finally turned to look at Hal, and his mouth was quirking into a genuine frown of confusion. Hal had the feeling he got to see that look on Bruce’s face roughly five times more than anyone else.

“A batarang. You know, those little bat-shaped boomerang-knives you’re always throwing at people instead of talking to them,” Hal said, making a vague bat shape with his hands around the bag. He pointed accusingly at Bruce’s belt. “Those. You’ve got three of them ready to go right now.”

“They’re just knives,” Bruce said, turning back to his surveillance.

“Boomerang-knives shaped like bats,” Hal repeated stubbornly. “Ergo, batarangs.”

“Are you sure you’re actually a grown man and not a child somehow transposed into the body of one?” Bruce asked.

“I know you are, but what am I?” Hal snorted. “Wait, are you being a jerk or can somebody really do that now? Because I heard about the guy with the mind-control hats, and this seems like--”

Bruce held up a hand sharply. Hal waited with what he felt was the patience of a saint until Bruce let it drop.

“Have they decided to flood the market with uzis?” Hal asked sourly.

“To riddle the competition with bullets,” Bruce said grimly. 

“So what now? We swoop in, bust some heads, dump their weapons into the harbor?” Hal cracked his knuckles and got to his feet.

Bruce stared at him, his mouth working soundlessly.

“Hold up one finger for a stroke, two for being overwhelmed with joy at the thought of getting to work with me one-on-one,” Hal said. He’d never seen Bruce literally speechless; usually he was just pointedly ignoring whoever had made the offending remark.

“Now you go home, and I call in a tip to the police,” Bruce managed thinly. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

“More like I go home, and then you swoop in, bust some heads, and dump their weapons into the harbor,” Hal grumbled. “I’m not falling for that again.”

“I’m not--” Bruce broke off with a strangled hiss of anger. “One, this is a job for the police. They simply need to be made aware of the full extent of the operation, and they will handle it. Two, that is too many people to,” Bruce made a face, “‘swoop in’ and ‘bust some heads.’”

“Maybe for you,” Hal pointed out. “I, on the other hand, happen to be the Green Lantern. And since when do you ever call the police? You’re _Batman_.”

“Frequently, Lantern. I frequently call the police. A large part of what I do is assisting the police.” Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. “Since these are arms dealers and not the Joker, immediate action whose results would be largely inadmissible in a court of law isn’t necessary in this case. And even if that wasn’t a concern, there are two of us. As soon as we crash through a window, ninety percent of them will scatter for the nearest available exit, of which there are ten. And that’s before the one with powers remembers that she has powers and uses it to punch several more in the exterior walls. We would need to formulate a plan and work together, not barrel in and act like amateurs.” Bruce seemed to get his temper back under control. “Three, those are AK-47s. Dumping them in the harbor would accomplish very little, aside from giving Killer Croc a leg up in his latest territorial dispute with Two-Face.”

“Guns and water don’t exactly mix,” Hal scoffed. “I know you don’t like them, but you should probably know your way around them.”

“They’re Kalashnikovs. You could leave them there for a week, and they’d still fire,” Bruce snapped. “They are, in fact, notoriously, disturbingly durable weapons.”

“Fine, I get it, you don’t want my help.” Hal raised his hands defensively. “Just tell me why you read Superman the riot act, and I’ll head back to Coast City.”

“I didn’t say anything to him. I was, in fact, hoping he wouldn’t remember doing it,” Bruce growled.

“That doesn’t sound like you,” Hal said after a moment. “No offense or anything, but you redefine the word ‘paranoid,’ and he kind of outed you a little there.”

“He was barely conscious from blood loss, and if I’d taken the time to repair the autopilot function, you wouldn’t have been present. I’m willing to let it go based on those two things alone.”

“You’re completely unbelievable sometimes, you know that?” Hal snapped. Bruce glared at him. “I wouldn’t have been present, my ass. Like I’m going to let a computer handle a life-and-death flight on my watch. Wasn’t gonna happen, Bats. And as for feeling guilty, he looked like he was clocking somewhere between ‘caught cheating on his wife’ and ‘caught selling state secrets to the commies.’ So I’m thinking _somebody_ laid a guilt-trip on him. How bad is this really, though? You know who I am. You know you can trust me with your life. I mean, case in point, you’ve done it enough times, and you’re still alive. Hell, you told him who you are when you knew less about him than you do about me.”

“I didn’t tell him,” Bruce said flatly.

“Huh?” Hal’s head snapped around. 

Bruce was screwing with him. Or Superman was telepathic? If Superman was telepathic, Hal was in trouble. Then again, if Superman was a telepath, he’d probably have already been on the receiving end of a few super-slaps. Not that it was his fault that the Kryptonian was built like a Greek god, but there were definitely a few things he’d have tried not to think about quite as hard if there was the possibility of someone other than the ever-discreet J’onn picking up on them.

“I didn’t add the lead lining to the cowl until after the first time we met,” Bruce explained. “He recognized me. I didn’t tell him who I was.”

“Wow.” Hal snorted. “I don’t know if I’m more impressed that you just admitted to making a mistake or that Superman’s capable of being a little bit of a douchebag sometimes. I expect that sort of thing from you, but the superpowered boyscout?”

“My files on Superman’s capabilities were... incomplete at the time,” Bruce said, his attention going back to the meeting. Hal followed his sight-line and frowned, seeing nothing to warrant the alert.

“Yeah. You went in unprepared and got caught with your pants down,” Hal chuckled. “I get it, spooky. Happens to the best of us.” He turned back to Bruce and narrowed his eyes. “Hang on, did you put lead foil in your mask just so Superman can’t tell when you’re rolling your eyes at him?”

“There’s no lead in the lenses, and I added the lining because him being the only known meta with that power is no guarantee that he’s the only one out there. I try not to make the same mistake twice,” Bruce said.

“Wasn’t really a mistake, though,” Hal muttered. “You’ve got your walkie-talkies and everything. You’re hero-buddies.”

“There was no reason to assume it would turn out that way,” Bruce reminded him. “As to someone laying a guilt-trip on him, I’d assume that’s just his own conscience. Making him feel guilty about it would be pointless and somewhat cruel, given that he was correct when he said I trust you.”

“You trust me,” Hal repeated. Hearing the words out loud should have been more flattering.

“As you were just pointing out,” Bruce said mildly. “Less than five minutes ago, in fact.”

“Well, I mean, obviously you do, or you wouldn’t work with me,” Hal said defensively. If Bruce had a superpower, it had to be finding a way to deliver what was objectively a compliment in a way that came off like an insult. “I just didn’t expect you to admit it.”

“Now that we’ve settled these thrilling and vital questions, shouldn’t you be going?” Bruce asked.

“Oh, come on. I brought snacks,” Hal protested, waving the bag of peanuts at him again. “And we’re making progress. Team-building, right?”

Bruce stared at him, and Hal realized he’d overplayed his hand. Bruce sighed, shook his head, and clipped his binoculars to his belt.

“Go home, Lantern,” he said. “I have several calls to make, and just because Flash and Arrow didn’t invite you on their pub-crawl doesn’t mean I’m going to entertain you for the rest of the evening.”

Hal’s brow furrowed. “Flash and Arrow are on a pub-crawl?”

* * *

Hal rested his forehead on the cool metal of the console and tried not to flinch every time the monitor beeped softly. If he’d been sure he could kill the alert functions without shutting down the whole maintenance routine--which would need either Ollie, who would blithely ignore him, or Bruce, who would definitely, decidedly _un_ blithely answer him in order to get it restarted--he’d have done it ten minutes ago. Had Bruce known he’d had monitor duty in the morning? Had he remembered it was the shift scheduled to run the hardware checks? Hal couldn’t tell if Bruce’s paranoia had rubbed off on him or if it was completely reasonable to assume Bruce had set him up for this. The guy could rattle off probable outcomes for a myriad of insanely complex hypotheticals; him not having seen this coming would have been suspicious.

The door slid open softly behind him, and Hal wondered if it would be a good thing or a bad thing if Superman had brought coffee.

“Are you hungover?” Clark asked gently. He sounded somewhere between disappointed and incredulous.

“I might just still be drunk,” Hal admitted, his voice muffled by the table and his folded arms. “Or both. Is it possible to be both?”

Why he’d thought he could still pull monitor duty after the night he’d had, he didn’t know. Probably because he was still drunk. Then again, they didn’t exactly have protocols for calling out sick. Busy with a supervillain, yes. Down with a bad flu, no. If he mentioned it to Bruce, they’d probably have one before the next shift change.

“What happened?” Clark asked, setting a cup of coffee down next to Hal’s elbow.

Hal decided that, on the balance, the coffee was a good thing. He levered himself up off the console and slumped back into his chair, then reached for it. He closed his eyes and let the warm, bitter liquid rest on his tongue before swallowing.

“How do you know how I take my coffee?” he asked after a moment.

“You’re terrible about throwing your trash away. Half the time you’re on duty, there’s a pile with three empty sugar packets and two crushed creamers sitting next to the coffee pot.” 

Clark examined the control panel for a few seconds before pulling up a menu and switching the confirmation alerts to silent mode.

“Thanks,” Hal sighed. “And sorry. I’ll try to be better about that.”

Clark shot him a lopsided smile. “It doesn’t really bother me. B’s the one who picked up on it first.”

“He would.” Hal rubbed his temples. That made a little more sense than Clark silently and implacably cataloging the break room detritus.

“So, what happened?” Clark prodded. “It’s not like you to go on a bender like that.”

“What happened,” Hal groaned, “is that Batman tricked me into going on a pub-crawl with a guy who metabolizes booze faster than he can suck it down and a guy who I swear to god was developed in a secret government lab for the sole purpose of drinking Soviet diplomats under the table. Arrow didn’t even have a _headache_ this morning.”

“Batman tricked you into doing this,” Clark echoed, looking skeptical.

“Sort of. He said they were going on a pub-crawl without me, and then when I showed up to bitch them out about it, it turned out they weren’t but thought a pub-crawl was an awesome idea.” Hal wondered if the look of absolute delight on Ollie’s face was going to start haunting his dreams. Wally hadn’t needed much convincing after that.

Clark rubbed the back of his neck and winced sympathetically. “Do I even want to know how this all got started? What were you doing in Gotham?”

“I might have been trying to stick up for you over the whole name thing,” Hal confessed. 

Clark’s face froze for a second, and Hal pretended not to notice as he sipped his coffee.

“I appreciate the thought, but if I’d needed you to do that, I’d have asked you to,” Clark said.

Hal shrugged and let his head rest against the back of the chair.

“Part of having each other’s backs is not needing to ask,” he pointed out. “It turned out to be kind of useless. He’s pissed at life, not you, and apparently even then not any more than usual.”

“I imagine that’s not how he put it,” Clark snorted.

“Well, no,” Hal said. “Did you really sneak a peek under his mask?”

Hal thought Clark started at that. It was turning into an interesting conversation, and he deeply wished his head wasn’t pounding and that it wasn’t so hard to focus properly. Clark looked properly shamefaced about it, and Hal tried to remember how long Clark and Bruce had known each other before the invasion had gotten everybody else together.

“Yes, I really looked under his mask. And he stuck a tracker on me and followed me back to my apartment. We really didn’t get off on the right foot,” Clark sighed. “It was a weird time for both of us, and I’m sure neither one of us is proud of how that meeting went.”

“I guess not,” Hal snorted. “He didn’t mention the part where he stuck a tracker on you. Come to think of it, he didn’t specifically say he knows who you are.”

Clark smiled ruefully. “He wouldn’t, would he? Even after you told him I told you. I’m a little surprised he didn’t call to verify, though.”

“I might have skipped that particular detail,” Hal said, coloring. He’d meant to run it past him just to check Bruce’s reaction. “Live to fight another day, and all that. I figure there’s probably a limit to how many different things he can want to strangle me over in one conversation before he just chucks a batarang at my face and swoops off to find a mugger to take it out on.” He drained his coffee. “He actually said he’d hoped you wouldn’t remember the whole ‘Promise me, Bruce Smith of Apartment 322-C, Murder Street, Gotham, to do the thing I’ve asked of you’ speech.”

“Murder Street?” Clark asked, raising his eyebrows.

“They’ve got a Crime Alley, why not a Murder Street?” Hal demanded.

“That’s a nickname,” Clark pointed out. He drummed his fingers on the console and checked the text alerts. His tone was a little too casual when he asked, “He hoped I wouldn’t remember?”

“Got the feeling he really didn’t hold it against you,” Hal said. “He even said something about me not being there if he’d fixed the autopilot. Which, seriously, as if anyone was in the mood to let a program take care of you in that condition.”

“B has a hard time trusting people,” Clark told him, his voice going oddly soft.

“You think?” Hal scoffed. “I’ve met CIA agents with fewer trust issues than he’s got. It’s like he grew up on the set of a soap opera or something.”

“It’s... complicated,” Clark said, shaking his head. His eyes were still on the display, but his attention was obviously a million miles away. “He’s too suspicious, yes, but it’s not coming out of nowhere.”

“If you say so,” Hal muttered, stretching his shoulders. It was reassuring to think that the pair of them were at least keeping tabs on each other. He was still oddly uncomfortable with knowing Wally’s name and face but nothing about his personal life. Central City looked out for the Flash, sure, but what happened if Wally Whoever, Ordinary Citizen, took a hit? “He trusts your AI, though. Or is that close enough to an autopilot for him?”

“He only trusts the AI because he has to,” Clark said. “I managed to broker a truce between them, but it’s fragile.”

“It doesn’t like people?” Hal asked. He’d run across casefiles on a few AIs like that in the Guardians’ records. It tended not to work out too well for people. Maybe Bruce hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d talked Hal into leaving.

“It doesn’t like people who can break it,” Clark explained, spreading his hands. “It seems to like most of my guests.”

Hal squinted at the sudden blip on the monitors and willed it to not be an emergency. “You wind up with a lot of guests at the Fortress of Solitude? Seems like something of a misnomer.”

“It’s a little hard to explain,” Clark said. He pulled up the details and scanned through them quickly. “My birth-parents weren’t sure what my life would be like here. Based on some of the recordings, I think they underestimated what my powers would be like by an order of magnitude. There was also a fair amount of bias on their part about expected human cultural norms. Krypton was a science planet, before the disaster that destroyed it. The whole thing seems to have been imagined as a refuge from the shambling hordes of cavemen they thought I’d be raised among based solely on Earth’s level of technological development.”

“Or maybe they happened to observe Dallas right after a Cowboys loss,” Hal suggested. “Please tell me that’s not something that needs us.”

“Minor earthquake along the San Andreas,” Clark reported. “Local building codes mean minimal damage, and local emergency crews are responding. So far, it looks like they’ve got it. Oh, and one of the transistors in the eighth grid needs to be replaced.”

“I’ll tell Arrow to bring his wallet next time he’s on the monitor,” Hal said. “The benefits of having a rich dude on board, huh?”

“Mmm.” Clark crossed his arms and looked thoughtful. “You good on coffee?”

“Unless you’re heading back to the kitchen already--” Hal found himself talking to a red and blue blur, then blinked at the full coffee cup on the console in front of him. A wave of vertigo washed through him, and his stomach roiled. “Okay. Thanks, but wow that is not something I want to see during a hangover.”

“Sorry,” Clark said. “I’ll try to keep it in mind next time you guys tie one on on a work night.”

“I’m telling you, it was a trap,” Hal said. “I’m a little surprised he didn’t say anything to you about not blaming you for the name thing when you talked to him, though. Possibly while also setting you up on a blind date with Livewire, just to keep his diabolical friend-turned-foe theme for the evening going.”

“We haven’t really talked since.” Clark ran his fingers through his hair and floated up to wipe a thick fleck of dust off an air vent. He landed noiselessly and brushed his hands off over a wastebasket. “We touched base, sure, but it wasn’t exactly a heart-to-heart.”

“You haven’t talked to him?” Hal blinked at him. He’d half-assumed Bruce had just been playing it close to the vest when they’d spoken. “I kind of assumed that’s where you were heading after you dropped by Coast City.”

Clark shook his head. “He’s hard to pin down when he’s busy. I’m surprised he talked to you, honestly.”

“Well, I brought peanuts to the stake-out. He kind of had to talk to me,” Hal explained. “You don’t talk, you don’t eat.”

“I’ll keep that in mind the next time he’s avoiding me,” Clark said, smiling.

“Just don’t drop the shells on the roof,” Hal warned.

Clark’s bright look clouded over for a second. “Why would you? That would be unneighborly.”

Hal shot him a sharp look before giving up and resting his forehead on the monitor again. There was no way Clark was putting him on. “The pair of you, I swear.”


	4. Chapter 4

Hal mentally ran through Sinestro’s last message again as he watched the stars streak past. It was an odd request, sure, but not particularly worrisome. He just wished Thaal had been a little bit more forthcoming about why this had to be checked out right away. There were still enough cultural barriers that the rings couldn’t translate past that Hal felt like he was missing half of what Thaal said even when he understood every individual word coming out of his mouth. It didn’t help that while Sinestro was a good guy and a great Lantern, there were times when he was cagey just for its own sake. Not that he held a candle to Bruce in that regard. Hal looked back at his lone passenger.

“Are you and Diana really dating?” he asked casually, his eyes skipping over the Javelin’s instrument panel.

“No.”

“Come on, B. You can tell me,” Hal wheedled, wiggling his eyebrows. It was lost on Bruce, who was frowning intently at the tablet in his hand. Hal was fairly certain this was Bruce’s first time in space, and he might as well have been sitting on the subway for all the attention he was giving the view. It was practically a crime to ignore such a gorgeous starscape.

“I thought the point of letting you fly was not having to put up with your incessant chatter,” Bruce said blandly.

“Anyone ever tell you you talk like a supervillain?” Hal sighed, nettled.

“No.”

“Because you were too busy maniacally laughing to hear them or because they were too terrified to say it?”

“Presumably the latter,” Bruce said. “I save the former for special occasions.”

“Did you just make a joke?” Hal twisted in his seat to stare at him. The cape and armor looked even more sinister than usual against the cheerful white of the ship’s interior.

“No.”

“Of course not,” Hal grunted, turning back around.

“And please pay attention. Not everyone aboard has a power ring.”

“You know I wouldn’t just leave you floating in a vacuum, right?” Hal snorted. “Even with all the backseat driving you’re doing.”

“Not deliberately,” Bruce said grudgingly.

“How are you and Diana not dating?” Hal asked. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to tap that.”

“Lantern, I’m only going to say this once.” Bruce’s tone was almost conversational. “Do not ever speak about her like that again.”

Hal flushed. “Okay, fair enough. Let me rephrase: You can’t tell me you don’t want to date her. And she’s obviously interested in you. If I wasn’t hearing things, she literally said ‘You owe me a dance’ to you a couple weeks back. So. How are you two somehow still not dating?”

“This life doesn’t leave much room for emotional entanglements,” Bruce said absently, his attention already back on the tablet.

“Emotional entanglements like being ready to throw down with a space-cop you have no hope of beating over an admittedly-inappropriate colloquialism?” Hal asked. He hadn’t meant it like that, and he was sure Bruce knew it. That Bruce had still come out swinging, as it were, told him all he needed to know about how bad Bruce had it for her. It was almost adorable.

“I don’t go up against opponents I have no hope of beating.”

Hal sighed. Almost adorable. Almost being the key word.

“Neatly dodged, B. You’re already entangled. You might as well make it worth your while.”

“Is this some inadvisable displacement of your anxiety about your crush on Green Arrow?” Bruce asked.

Hal barely checked a reflexive denial. Bruce hadn’t even glanced up to see if the blow had landed, and Hal felt a wave of anger roll through him.

“No, it isn’t, and thanks for being a dick about it,” he snapped.

“You’re welcome.”

“And there’s no quote-unquote anxiety. Dude’s straight. You know, as an arrow. Ha ha.” Hal scowled at Bruce’s reflection. “It’s not the first time I’ve wound up with a crush on someone who’s not interested, and it won’t be the last. I’m a grown man. I’ll get over it. Doesn’t mean you and Diana shouldn’t take your shot.”

“There’s also the option where we go back to professional disinterest in each other’s love lives,” Bruce suggested.

“It’s going to be a long flight,” Hal pointed out stubbornly. “I’m just trying to keep up my end of the conversation. We could talk about how the everloving hell you laid hands on that LexCorp jet stabilizer you’ve got in the batplane, instead. You know it’s only just now making it into LexCorp prototypes, right?”

“As I recall, it fell off the back of a truck that was attempting to run over a whistleblower scheduled to testify against Luthor in a chemical-dumping investigation.”

“So you helpfully picked it up in the hope of returning it to its rightful owner?” Hal asked.

“The rightful owner in that particular instance being Wayne Enterprises,” Bruce told him, “I treated it as a new lead in a corporate espionage case.”

“Since when do you look into that kind of thing?” Hal asked, genuinely surprised. Batman wasn’t often associated with strictly property crime. “It seems a little, I don’t know, bloodless for you.”

“Since a dangerous chemical flooding the black market started with a terminated project at that company,” Bruce said. “Or, in the case you’re actively distracting me from, when personally asked to do so by the CEO who so graciously manufactured the ship you’re doubtless going to crash into an asteroid.”

“I’m not going to crash into an asteroid,” Hal protested. “I’ve done this tons of times.”

“In a ship?” Bruce asked. “Or with the ring?”

“Same thing, practically,” Hal said, waving a hand dismissively. “Not to mention this thing’s loaded with all those automated features you’re so fond of. If it hadn’t come off a Kord Industries production line, I’d swear you designed it. It pretty much won’t _let_ me crash into an asteroid, unless I smash,” he scanned the panel, “that button right there, which kills all the protocols and lets me do whatever the hell I want. Right now, I could go take a nap and just wake up in orbit around the unpronounceable mess we’re heading for.”

Bruce frowned at him. “I assumed that was a generic alphanumeric designation, not a name.”

Hal stared at the pulsing red dot on the screen and pursed his lips. That would actually make a little more sense than the natives having named their planet the local version of Dvcmk-IV. Hell if he was going to give Bruce the satisfaction of telling him that, though.

“Isn’t boosting a stabilizer design from Wayne Enterprises kind of worse than swiping it from LexCorp?” he asked instead. “I mean, Luthor’s pretty much got a pitchfork, horns, and a tail, so it’s hard to get too upset if his stuff goes missing for a good cause, but I’ve never heard anything that awful about, um, whoever’s in charge over there.”

“Lucius Fox,” Bruce supplied.

Hal waited for a full minute before rolling his eyes and clearing his throat. “So...?”

“Who permitted me to retain the design for use in the jet as payment for services rendered,” Bruce gritted. “Harassing me about this cannot _possibly_ be your sole source of entertainment.”

“Does services rendered mean not calling the cops?” Hal asked. “Because that’s a really sweet feature, and I am absolutely loving it in those prototypes, but Cla--” A swift glare in his direction from Bruce’s reflection cut him off. “But Superman would probably be really disappointed in you over that.”

“Services rendered means calling the cops on the people responsible for the intellectual property theft and the distribution of a serious health hazard,” Bruce told him. “The company was reasonably blameless. They ended the project when the results proved dangerous, and the employee who stole the files had no priors or other significant red flags. If she hadn’t gone for another bite of the apple by selling the stabilizer blueprints to LexCorp, they’d have had a very difficult time explaining how their benched product was turning up in the hands of violent criminals. Essentially, I helped them clear their name. They were grateful.”

“I’m still not seeing how corporate espionage turned into your problem in the first place,” Hal said, buffing his nails on his uniform.

“I have a selection of audiobooks you could be deliberately obtuse at,” Bruce offered.

“Oh, come on,” Hal sighed. “This is the closest I have ever gotten to you telling me a cape-story. Don’t hold out on me.”

“A cape-story?” Bruce asked, putting his hand to his face.

“Whatever you want to call it,” Hal said impatiently. “Like when Superman told us about the first time he ran into kryptonite, and that reporter chick saved him using her sweet free-throw skills. Or literally any story Arrow has ever told anyone.”

“There I was, being kept from the investigation by a man with an alien power ring and a remarkable inability to keep himself occupied, when suddenly I came to my senses and stopped indulging him,” Bruce narrated.

“So you do recognize the core concept,” Hal said, taking it as a victory. “Also? Rude.”

“Well, you are preventing me from spending some quality time glowering at electronics.”

“What?” Hal cast a suspicious glance over his shoulder.

“Nothing,” Bruce said.

“No, that was definitely not nothing.” Hal shook his head. “I cannot believe you. How long, exactly, has that been sticking in your craw?”

“It hasn’t been.”

“Yeah, right,” Hal huffed. “You went home and wrote it down in your damn journal, didn’t you? ‘Dear Diary, today Green Lantern said the meanest thing about my angst when I wouldn’t let him play with my toys.’”

Bruce laughed drily. “Don’t flatter yourself. It was evocative of a certain image, that’s all.”

“You know, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you laugh,” Hal said after a moment.

“Possibly.” Bruce shrugged. “Between the criminal metas and the natural disasters, League gatherings aren’t generally a source of levity.”

“No, I mean really. I have honestly never heard you laugh before.” Hal wasn’t sure he liked the sound. It was too humorless for a real laugh, and it made Bruce seem even less predictable than he had before.

“And?”

Leave it to Bruce to not understand why it was surprising, he thought.

“You’re the worst, you know that?” Hal grumbled. “Wait, why do you have audiobooks? Is that what you do when you’re just hanging out on a roof all night? Listen to dramatic readings of…” He glanced down at the screen. “ _The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao_ and _Devil in the White City_? Seriously? And how did you just make this thing do that?”

“They were pre-loaded on the device, I mostly listen to the police band or testimony recordings, and there are limited interface capabilities built into the Javelin for convenient map and software updates,” Bruce sighed.

“And talking to me is so mind-numbing that you had to test them out with the latest round of remaindered best-sellers?” Hal sulked. “What if _that’s_ why we wind up crashing into a moon? The ship starts trying to read to me and can’t buffer something properly, or misinterprets _Eat, Pray, Love_ as astral coordinates, and boom. That’s it, game over.”

“We’re not going to crash because of an mp3 file.” Bruce glanced from the tablet to Hal and back again. “Kord was very confident about that, at least. And if I’m going to get dragged along on a mission to which I had no business being assigned, the least you could do is let me review these bank records in peace.” 

“Don’t want to get dragged along on a mission involving Durlans, don’t have one on speed-dial,” Hal said with false cheer. He was still torn between desperately wanting to know how _that_ had happened and being afraid to ask. Durlans weren’t exactly common in their section of the galaxy. Clark had still seemed pretty rattled over whatever it had been, but they were both clearly none the worse for wear.

“That is a gross misrepresentation of the level of my familiarity with Anderson Gaines, and you know it.” Bruce flicked at the tablet’s screen. “Superman was the logical choice for this.”

“And he said the same thing about you, so it pretty much boiled down to which one of you was my favorite.” Hal spread his hands. “What can I say? He asks how things are going and always chips into the coffee fund and even brought bagels one time, so he gets to spend his weekend at the beach with his three or four super-model girlfriends and a cooler full of beer.”

“He’s sleeping in and spending an extra half-hour on the phone with his parents,” Bruce said, exasperated.

“Presumably an impromptu game of beach volleyball has broken out by now,” Hal continued, ignoring him. “One can only hope against a half-dozen vacationing Swedish bikini models. You, on the other hand, yell at me for being late to meetings and get yourself set on fire right in front of me. So you get to waste your weekend running down a bullshit rumor about an alien shapeshifter swanning around with a ring and no ties to the Lanterns, as requested by the person who should be backing me up but is busy with an emergency on his homeworld.”

“It was the fifth time you were late,” Bruce pointed out, “and I was wearing a fire-proof suit.”

“Which I’m sure would have been a great relief, had you bothered explaining that before the aforementioned wall of flame,” Hal said flatly. Seeing Bruce disappear into a maelstrom of fire and smoke like that had given him nightmares for the next week. If he was being honest, the visceral response would probably have been just as intense if he’d known that the suit was supposed to be fire-proof. Even Batman’s equipment failed sometimes. Since Bruce hadn’t seen fit to mention the possibility that getting engulfed in flame wouldn’t necessarily result in him being roasted alive prior to the attack, Hal wasn’t interested in being honest.

“I made sure everyone involved was briefed about the dangers before we moved out,” Bruce said evenly. “It was a foreseen possibility.”

“Yes, but you see, when you don’t tell anyone about the defensive measures you’ve employed, they tend to do ridiculous things like just assume that you’re going to, I don’t know, get out of the way of the giant fireballs,” Hal spat. “And then panic when you don’t. And eventually your complete lack of remorse about it lands you on alien patrol with me instead of getting to spend your time brooding into the perpetual twilight of the festering cesspool that you call a hometown.”

Hal made a conscious effort to relax his grip on the yoke and regretted not just turning on an audiobook when he’d had the chance. He hadn’t really thought through what a day’s worth of transport time being cooped up with Bruce would be like. Even the jump drive Kord had installed could only shave so much time off the journey without the risk of spitting them out in the middle of a sun. 

Of course, bringing along passengers was even more cumbersome with just the ring, and there was something to be said for being able to take a nap and eat something that wasn’t freeze-dried before diving headlong into what was probably going to be trouble. Sinestro liked all his Is dotted and his Ts crossed, but he was also confident enough in Hal’s abilities that he wouldn’t have warned him to bring reinforcements without a reason. Hal had asked Clark less on account of the fact that he was the sort of person Hal could spend a weekend on a fishing boat with and not be tempted to push him off it and more on account of Clark having dealt with Durlans before. Clark had been so sure of himself when he’d recommended Bruce instead that it hadn’t occurred to Hal to second-guess him.

Hal tried to dispel the tension settling into his shoulders and neck and resolved to second-guess the hell out of him next time.

“So long as we’re having this argument while confined to a relatively small spacecraft for another twenty-one hours, when were you planning on informing anyone that your ring doesn’t work on yellow objects?” Bruce asked. He almost sounded bored, and Hal watched his reflection swipe to the next screen on the tablet.

“Excuse me?” he asked, his mouth going dry.

“You heard me.”

“It just didn’t come up,” Hal said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He’d about yelled himself hoarse after the stunt Bruce had pulled with Firebug, but the completely unphased tone of Bruce’s voice was already kicking his flight-or-fight response into overdrive. “How the hell did you find out, anyway?”

“It was included in an illustrated history of Apokolips that Big Barda was kind enough to lend me.” Bruce swiped to another screen. “There were even some very interesting artists’ renderings of Darkseid almost eradicating the entire Corps during the last action Oa saw fit to pursue against him thanks to a miraculous new superweapon.” Bruce reoriented the tablet. “Yellow paint, I believe it was.”

“Really.”

“Fortunately, that sort of technology is decades away from reaching Earth.”

“It’s not strictly true,” Hal told him, trying to keep his voice even. “I’ve used the ring on yellow things a few times now.”

Bruce didn’t need to know that none of the other Lanterns had believed him when he’d told them, or that it had damn near cost him everything he’d had in him to pull it off. Or that it had only just barely worked.

“I see. So you could, for instance, avoid being plastered all over a brick wall by a yellow wrecking ball.”

Hal winced at the memory of the fight Bruce was clearly thinking of with that example. It had cracked a rib and bruised his hip clear to the bone. “It barely clipped me.”

“Or to prevent yourself from being turned into a very regrettable smear on the cityscape courtesy of a cab.”

“Again, barely clipped me. And what the hell is up with cabbies in Gotham?”

“Or avoid serious injury at the hands of the no less than five serious opponents we’ve faced with yellow costumes, weapons, or bodies.”

Hal shot him a hunted look. “What do you want from me here, B?”

That at least got him to put the tablet down. Bruce rubbed his chin and sighed.

“I understand that trusting the League with that information wouldn’t have been easy,” he said. There was an edge to his voice now, and Hal wasn’t sure if it was more or less comforting. “It’s hardly an idea with much local currency at the moment, and volunteering it to a half-dozen people capable of putting it out there is a significant risk. But.” Bruce paused and shook his head. “Diana, Superman, or even the Flash knowing about it could have prevented a great deal of unnecessary danger. Being aware of the hazard is the first step to remedying it.”

“So you told them,” Hal finished bitterly.

Bruce stopped short, his mouth falling open a little, and Hal tried not to feel petulantly triumphant about actually getting that much of a response out of him.

“Of course I didn’t tell them,” he snapped. “It’s entirely possible Superman and Arrow know by now, and I wouldn’t be shocked to find that Diana and J’onn had put two and two together to come up with four after the last incident. J’onn’s vulnerability to fire in particular has left him rather sensitive to such weaknesses in others’ defenses. I’m advising you to make sure at least one of them knows, not dancing around the fact that I’ve already informed them.”

Hal relaxed slightly. As far as getting reamed out by Batman went, that had been marginally less painful than he’d expected. Not that the news that Darkseid’s forces not only knew about the rings’ flaw but had exploited it with brutal efficiency in the past was easy to hear. Hal ran his fingers through his hair. It was weird that the Guardians hadn’t mentioned anything about it, though. He knew he’d filed a few reports with them that touched on Darkseid, mostly thanks to his involvement with the League. It would have been nice if he’d gotten a big “Do Not Engage” warning back. It suddenly occurred to him that Bruce’s advice hadn’t been that bad. If half the League had already figured it out on their own… Hal stopped and reconsidered Bruce’s list.

“Arrow?” he asked. “Really?”

Bruce turned toward him and tilted his head. “Please don’t tell me that drunken-idiot routine of his managed to fool you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call him a drunken idiot, because what the _hell_ , B?” Hal demanded, coloring. “But he’s not exactly, uh, taking this as seriously as he could.” 

He reassessed every interaction he’d had with Ollie and came up with a blank. Oliver was very good at what he did, yes, but he was also very fond of the finer things in life, and if he had to choose between going on patrol and going to a party, the party was going to win nine times out of ten. If he made a commitment, he stuck to it, but he didn’t really see being a hero as a duty. He was practically the anti-Batman. Hal had to admit it was as much a relief as it was an aggravation, and it was a large part of Oliver’s charm. Ollie was _fun_ at the same time that he was a challenge. He was skilled without being intimidating the way Diana was. He knew how to enjoy himself without coming off as immature, the way Wally could. He was dangerous enough to be exciting, but not enough to be frightening like Bruce. And none of it seemed to be a put-on. Hal couldn’t think of anything he’d said or done that might have meant Ollie knew about the ring’s peculiar blind spot.

“No, he’s not. But don’t mistake a lack of dedication for a lack of brains. He’s remarkably observant, and he has a keen analytical mind when he cares to apply it. Considering how much time you’ve been spending together lately and how friendly you’ve become, it seems reasonable to conclude that he finds you interesting and has been paying attention. It’s more likely he’s seen enough to have arrived at the truth.” Bruce shook his head. “I’d advise you not to underestimate him.”

“Why can’t you even fight like a normal person?” Hal grumbled. “You can’t just cuss me out for not letting on that my Achilles’ heel is a ten-pound bunch of ripe bananas. You have to shop around a few paranoid whackjob theories about the guy I’m crushing on, too.”

Bruce crossed his arms. “Paranoid whackjob theories.”

“Yes.”

“Arrow being smarter than he usually acts is a paranoid whackjob theory.”

“He doesn’t usually act like an idiot,” Hal said sharply.

“Around you,” Bruce returned.

“You think everyone’s an idiot,” Hal said, rubbing the back of his neck. He didn’t have a shot with Ollie, and he knew it. That didn’t necessarily mean he wanted Bruce stepping all over the tiny amount of wallowing in self-pity he’d planned to do before moving on. He wanted to hang out with Tom and Carol and mope a little about a guy being out of his league, not defend his character against... what the hell was Bruce even getting at, anyway?

“I don’t think he’s an idiot,” Bruce explained slowly. 

“Oh my god. Fine,” Hal snapped. “You just think he _acts_ like one. Which he doesn’t, for the record. Unless your definition of idiot is someone other people occasionally enjoy being around.” Hal paused as the pieces fell into place. He snorted. “You know how you sound? Jealous.”

Hal shook his head, and Bruce stared at him.

“Of?” he eventually prompted.

“Of?” Hal echoed, throwing his hands up. “I don’t know. He’s handsome, rich, popular, and a superhero. Children smile at him instead of hiding behind their mothers in terror. What could you possibly have to be jealous of?”

“I could spend the entire rest of this trip explaining the ways in which you’re off-base, or we could skip it in favor of politely ignoring each other,” Bruce told him.

“You know what?” Hal asked. “That’s a great idea. Let me just fire up one of these books you so helpfully brought along. How about _Andromeda Strain_?”

He jabbed the touchscreen viciously, feeling stupid even as he did it. Bruce was shaking his head and already back at his tablet, and now there was no way to back down without looking like an even bigger tool. Whatever sore spots he’d hoped to hit, he clearly hadn’t touched on anything Bruce was sensitive about. Literally all he’d done was make himself look like a jerk. Even assuming Bruce was a bit of a troll under the mask--and Hal still had a hard time believing anyone could spend that much time doing everything Bruce did when getting laid was a realistic alternative--it was a cheap shot. And given how many otherwise-sensible people seemed to like him in spite of what an asshole he could be, the lack of popularity was probably a choice.


	5. Chapter 5

Hal massaged his temples and tried not to re-catalog every particular way the mission had been a complete and utter disaster. Bruce tapped the console, and the narrator’s overly-chipper voice flooded the cockpit with the rest of the loving description of death by space-plague. Hal slapped the pause icon again and glared at him balefully.

“Can you not?” he demanded.

“I’d like to know how it ends,” Bruce said innocently.

“When we get home, I will buy you a goddamned hardcover,” Hal ground out.

Bruce’s lips quirked down, and he retreated to the cabin. Hal tried to focus on the preflight checks.

“Why did you pick it if you didn’t want to listen to it?” Bruce asked. He checked their cargo for a second time, and Hal rubbed his eyes.

“I confused it with something that didn’t involve an extremely justified phobia,” he said coldly. “Happy?”

“Would you like to listen to something else?”

Hal took a deep breath and scrolled through the system readings. Everything was green. They could get the hell off the planet as soon as Bruce strapped in.

“I’d like a very long list of things, starting with your seat belt on,” Hal managed. Bruce scoffed but did as he’d been asked.

Hal closed his eyes, wrapped his hands around the controls, and let the tension drain out of him.

“Off we go,” he said, firing up the thrusters. They were spaceborne in bare moments, and Hal waited while the computer calculated their trajectory.

“To meet with your contact?” Bruce asked.

“My contact?” Hal said, puzzled.

“The one who put you onto this in the first place?” Bruce reminded him. “You weren’t exactly clear on the itinerary after locating the Durlan or failing to substantiate the rumor.”

“I no longer _have_ an itinerary. The itinerary is on fire, taking on water, and abandoned by all hands,” Hal snapped. He leaned back and took another deep breath, this time counting backwards from ten as he let it out. Starting another fight with Bruce wasn’t going to help anything. “The guy’s my CO, not my contact. And no, we’re not meeting with him. Sinestro’s probably still busy with some emergency in his home system. You know, trying to keep his planet from spinning off into the sun or something. This is technically his jurisdiction. He’d have come himself if it hadn’t been urgent, and he’s not going to leave until he knows everything’s stitched up. I’ll send him a message once we’re back on Earth.”

“Sinestro.” Bruce coughed slightly.

Hal sighed and made a face. “Yeah.”

“That’s... a name.”

“I know, right?” Hal spread his arms. “I thought the ring’s translator was broken for a week and a half.” 

“Who are you planning on delivering this to, then?”

Hal frowned at the computer’s progress bar and willed it to calculate faster. Not that the computer going faster would get him answers that much faster, but it would at least be something. 

“There’s an outpost more or less on the way home we can drop it at. They probably won’t know what it is or why we’re dumping it on them, but it’ll get where it needs to go.” Hal stretched his shoulders and cracked his neck. Maybe if he was lucky they wouldn’t also give him the third degree about what the hell was going on. He already felt like enough of a fuck-up every time he had to deal with the Guardians’ bureaucracy. Getting put on the spot when he genuinely was in the middle of a giant fuck-up was more than he was willing to endure at the moment.

Hal chewed his lip. Finding out that the Durlan in question was indeed a Lantern hadn’t really put him at ease. He could see being personally blissfully ignorant of the Green Lantern version of special forces. Hell, the whole thing with the Guardians taking on Darkseid and getting their asses handed to them had been news to him. It just didn’t seem like the sort of thing that _Thaal_ would miss. And Von himself had seemed more than a little untrustworthy. Sure, he’d known all the right protocols and said all the right things. And most people with nefarious motives didn’t go around voluntarily sending powerful artifacts to Oa for safe-keeping. And it made a certain amount of sense that the people suited to being black-ops Lanterns would come off as a little sketchy. But he hadn’t really had a ring, nobody was sure why the reports had mentioned rings, and there was something about him that had grated on Hal’s nerves even before he’d started hanging all over Bruce. A soft chirp and a brief contrast change on the display alerted him to the course being almost fully plotted. Hal glanced over his shoulder and found that Bruce was back to being absorbed in whatever financial statements Kord had given him.

“Ready in three,” Hal announced. “And just in case I somehow made it unclear, I absolutely have your back when it comes to creeper aliens, even if they claim to work for the Guardians.”

“Oh?” Bruce looked up from the tablet.

“Yup.” 

Hal’s hands hovered over the controls. There was always the chance that engaging the jump drive would forestall the looming conversation. Bruce was intensely guarded about his personal space, but Hal figured even Clark would have been explaining personal boundaries to Von by the time they’d been ready to leave. Hal could think of maybe three people who could get away with touching Bruce for no reason, and even they didn’t push it. It had been hard not to twitch every time the alien had brushed against him with studied nonchalance or hovered just a little too close. Bruce hadn’t reacted, but Hal could only assume it was thanks to not wanting to cause an interstellar incident and not because it hadn’t bothered him.

“You know he was only doing that to provoke you, right?” Bruce asked.

“What?” Hal’s face crinkled as he tried to follow the logic on that one.

“Every time he got too close to me, he was watching you for a reaction,” Bruce explained.

“Why?”

“To see how prone you were to violence? To judge how much responsibility you felt for members of your group? Just to keep you off-balance?” Bruce shook his head. “My experience with intra-Corps posturing and alien psychology is too limited to offer much insight there.”

“Maybe he was just trying to see if you were single,” Hal said. 

The idea that Von had been trying to get a read on him by hassling a teammate fit but still didn’t sit well. He’d blundered into the middle of a covert operation the regular Corps wasn’t supposed to know about, conducted by Lanterns nobody would admit existed, and immediately gotten everybody’s back up by unwittingly telling them they’d been made. He’d followed up by asking questions so blunt Bruce had had to take over. If their own mission hadn’t already been going pear-shaped, Hal doubted Von’s crew would have trusted him enough to hand over the artifact they’d recovered from a supposed pirate base too big and long-term to really belong to the pack of nomadic opportunists credited with running it.

“Regardless,” Hal said, clearing his throat. “Thanks for playing it cool, but don’t think you can’t tell someone to step off just because it’s Lantern business.”

He busied himself with the console and didn’t look back at Bruce again. Hal didn’t need to see him rolling his eyes and sneering at Hal’s attempt at leadership. He wasn’t great at talks like these, which was why he usually left them to Clark or Diana. Even Ollie’s glibness was an improvement over his own phony-sounding patter. It wasn’t that he didn’t mean it. He did. He just couldn’t manage to _sound_ like he meant it. 

“It had its advantages,” Bruce told him, “so you can stop fretting.”

“I’m not fretting,” Hal said. He wrinkled his nose. “And you cannot possibly tell me you were attracted to that guy.”

“What?” Bruce looked up, frowning. “That’s not what I was talking about. Once we were in close quarters, the proximity would have made it easier to use the freeze-ray on him without danger to bystanders.”

“The freeze-ray?” Hal asked, feeling like he’d missed a step somewhere. Which probably meant that he’d missed several, with Bruce. He could usually guess at the train of thought by which Wally or Shayera or even Clark had arrived at something. Diana and Ollie were a coin toss. When it came to Bruce and J’onn, it was a lost cause.

“Durlans don’t have many weaknesses that aren’t either fatal or not recommended for use in personal combat. One of them happens to be extreme cold,” Bruce told him. “Transformation is catastrophic until they’ve thawed back out. It nullifies their primary offensive capability.”

“So you just naturally brought along a freeze-ray.” Hal stared at the console for a moment and tried to fit that in with what he knew of Bruce. At this rate it was actually conceivable that he lived in an abandoned military bunker. “Should I be worried that you just happen to have a freeze-ray lying around? I mean, what did you do, hit Captain Cold’s last yard-sale?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bruce said sharply. “Snart’s gun is far too dangerous to use on an opponent you don’t want to kill. I used one of Mr. Freeze’s older models.”

“Mr. Freeze.”

“Yes.”

“Gotham has a Captain Cold knock-off called Mr. Freeze.” 

Bruce sighed, and Hal wondered if it would be worth it to ask if Bruce was _sure_ there wasn’t something in Gotham’s water supply. He fired up the drive instead. 

“Hang on to your cowl.”

Bruce stowed the tablet in a mesh pocket on the seat next to him, and Hal slid his palm over the roller to engage the jump drive. The universe seemed to lurch around them, their immediate surroundings warping unnervingly, and then they were moving at a normal-seeming clip. Hal was always amazed at the way incredible distances could make equally incredible speeds seem leisurely. It was a few seconds before Bruce unwrapped his hands from around the grips on the bench. Hal wondered if the disorientation hit him as hard as it hit Wally, who would've had his head between his knees and been hamming it up for sympathy by now, or if it was just the indignity of leaving the piloting up to someone else. Bruce’s hands were steady when he reached for the tablet. Hal thought it was probably closer to the stress of being a passenger than the stress of wormholing their way through space.

“Freeze isn’t a Captain Cold knock-off,” Bruce said, “if for no other reason than that he was doing pioneering work in cryogenics when Snart was still in grade school. His name is Fries, though technically he’s a doctor. The papers came up with the ‘Mr. Freeze’ nickname. I’m not sure if it was a deliberate play on it or just an accidental misspelling.”

“Fine line between stupid and clever,” Hal muttered.

“Just a turn,” Bruce agreed.

Hal’s lip twisted. “You’ve seen _Spinal Tap_.”

“Why do you find that so shocking?”

“Because it implies that you watch movies,” Hal said. He tried to imagine Batman’s lair with a couch and a tv and failed. An abandoned military bunker with a small den in the corner wasn’t nearly as imposing.

“Ah,” Bruce said, grimacing. “This would be further arguments on the theme that I’m a pod-person, then.”

A warm flush lit Hal’s cheeks. As he recalled, he’d stuck with his original vampire hypothesis. Ollie had been the one who’d brought up _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_. Wally had gotten halfway through what had turned out to be the plot of some western before it had stopped being funny and started being credible. J’onn hadn’t slacked off on the actual work they’d been tasked with long enough to weigh in, which had been disappointing but expected.

“You were listening in on that one, huh?”

“Of course not. On the list of things I find a productive use of my time, monitoring grown men who are supposed to be reviewing radiation patterns to find Luthor’s remaining weapons caches ranks somewhere between watching paint dry and listening to responding officers determine that the reported prowler was in fact a hungry raccoon,” Bruce told him. “It merely led to an incredibly awkward conversation with J’onn about whether or not I should be open about being a pod-person, and if I thought the team being half composed of aliens might affect our credibility with humans.” 

Hal could feel his face turning an even brighter red. “J’onn, huh?”

Ollie had claimed to have photographic evidence of Batman bursting fully-formed out of an alien cocoon, hadn’t he? And J’onn still wasn’t so hot at picking up on the difference between bluster and conviction when he wasn’t in direct mental contact with the person.

“It then led to an incredibly awkward discussion of human science-fiction tropes, which led to an incredibly awkward viewing of _Godzilla_.”

Hal scrolled through the engine readings and tried not to fidget. It hadn’t really been trash-talk. He checked that thought. _Most_ of it hadn’t really been trash-talk. And he’d said way worse things to Bruce’s face, probably within the last week. They’d been screwing around, making jokes. Most of it had been, after a fashion, complimentary. But getting a version of it filtered through an alien mindset with far fewer human cultural touchpoints had probably not been the best way to pick up on that. He could imagine about how that had gone, too. Something nagged at him, though, some odd memory that was lurking in the back of his mind. He stopped cold when realization dawned.

“Is that why Mount Justice smells like popcorn every time you two have monitor-duty together?” he demanded.

“Mount Justice?” Bruce asked.

“It’s in a mountain, we’re the Justice League, and you don’t get to act like I’m an idiot for calling it that,” Hal said firmly. “Also, Ollie started it, and if anybody gets to name it, it’s the guy who paid for it.”

“I see.”

Hal didn’t even have to check Bruce’s reflection to tell he was smirking at him. The tone of his voice just oozed smirkiness.

“And it’s not like it’s a bad name,” Hal gritted.

“I suppose it could be worse,” Bruce allowed. “There was a rumor going around that he refers to his own base of operations as the Arrow Cave.”

“Huh. Yeah,” Hal coughed. He was never going to live it down if Bruce found out he was the one who’d suggested that name, especially once it came out that it had just been a riff on Hal’s own theories about how faithful Bruce was to the bat theme in more private spheres. And since Hal was all but positive that Oliver had just been humoring him when he’d run with it, it was pretty much guaranteed to come back on him if Bruce ever mentioned it to Ollie. “That rumor mill’s something else.”

“Especially when the participants have a tenuous grasp on reality at the best of times,” Bruce sighed. “Quinn even went so far as to insist that he has arrows with boxing gloves on them.”

“Ha. Yeah. What’s next? A glue arrow?” Hal managed. He’d been equal parts amused by and envious of Ollie’s trick-arrows. That he’d somehow gotten a stick with a boxing glove on the end of it to more or less work as an arrow was impressive in and of itself, but that he could somewhat reliably hit things with it was jaw-dropping.

“It would be less aerodynamically improbable,” Bruce said, shaking his head.

Hal bit his tongue. Either Bruce was needling him in the most understated way humanly possible or they were all going to get the mother of all lectures on taking heroics seriously the second Bruce found out they hadn’t just been rumors. Then again, maybe Bruce had less of a high ground on that one than everyone had thought.

“So, you and J’onn have been having movie-night for like, three months now?” he asked, groping for a change of topic. “How many old sci-fi movies could he possibly want to watch?”

And it wasn’t, he told himself, as if he didn’t want to know what the hell was going on there. He wasn’t sure if he was more amazed that it was happening or put out that the rest of them hadn’t been invited. Then again, watching black-and-white forced-perspective shots of confused animals while people screamed and fell over before the terribly-staged onslaught with the two League members most likely to be described as ‘stoic’ or ‘secretly a chunk of granite brought to life by a whimsical sorcerer’ wasn’t exactly how he’d have described his ideal Saturday night. 

“You can’t understand science fiction in films without watching a few old horror films as well,” Bruce said simply. “Or grasp the significance of the preacher in _Pale Rider_ without getting into westerns.”

“So you’ve just been watching movies,” Hal said, trying to wrap his brain around it. “Together.” 

“Well, Diana attends when she can.”

“So the _three_ of you have just been watching movies,” Hal amended.

“Mostly they watch the movies, and I watch the monitor,” Bruce said, his guard up from the question in Hal’s voice.

“Doesn’t that negate the whole point of earth-man cultural enrichment?”

“No. I’ve seen everything. If they have questions, I can usually answer them.”

“Which brings us back to you watching movies.” Hal rubbed his temples, his headache creeping back. “Which is a productive use of your time, presumably ranking somewhere above not watching movies.”

“Not really. It would be more efficient if Superman were supervising.”

“Efficient?”

Bruce shrugged. “He has a talent for interpersonal relations.”

“Interpersonal relations?”

“I believe you called it ‘team-building,’” Bruce said acidly. “He’s very good at it.”

Hal made a mental note to find a calendar somewhere and record the date on which Bruce had tacitly admitted to being less than stellar at something. He still wasn’t sure whether he should feel bewildered or slighted, but at least he no longer felt guilty about the original jackassery.

“You should run it past him,” Hal suggested, laughing. “See what he thinks.”

“I did. Fairly shortly after _Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman_ , in fact.”

“Yeah? The efficiency argument wasn’t persuasive, huh?”

“Surprisingly unpersuasive,” Bruce agreed. “He expressed regret that I split out of my pod before it could imprint the concept of friendship.”

Hal rolled his eyes. Bruce was laying it on thick, but it wasn’t like Hal couldn’t tell when he was being played. “He did not say that.”

“He did.”

“If I apologize for having had that conversation in front of J’onn, behind your back, and/or at all, will you admit that he didn’t say that?” Hal asked.

“No, because I would be lying,” Bruce said levelly. “But you should apologize. It’s getting to the point where it’s difficult to get any work done around them while I’m on duty. When I tried to stop the screenings, Shayera announced that attendance was mandatory and insisted we watch _Throne of Blood_.”

Hal made a strangled noise and rested his head on the console. “Is there anyone aside from the three of us who doesn’t turn up for these things?”

“Aquaman hasn’t been to one since _Princess Mononoke_ got a better reception than _Ponyo_ , and Superman hasn’t been to one since I ‘ruined rom-coms.’” Bruce pantomimed quote marks.

“I had no idea you could be this petty,” Hal said. “I mean, I knew you were petty, but this beggars belief.”

Bruce shot him a cold look. “It’s hardly my fault that the overwhelming majority of romantic comedies use sexist stereotypes instead of characters and misogynist cliches instead of plots.”

“I meant for blackballing us, not for destroying an alien orphan’s ability to enjoy... Jesus, they really do, don’t they?” Hal made a face.

“No one was blackballed,” Bruce said, tapping his fingers against the tablet’s case. “I believe J’onn asked Superman to attend, but neither one of them ever confirmed that suspicion. J’onn definitely invited Diana, who asked Shayera and Aquaman to come. Shayera asked Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel brought Big Barda and her husband along a few times. ”

“Who aren’t even League members!” Hal protested. “Half of that list is not even full-time properly in the League.”

“You’re free to try explaining to an Amazonian princess that people who’ve saved our collective lives along with the world aren’t invited when it’s her turn to pick the genre, if you want,” Bruce offered.

“Couldn’t talk her out of it, huh?” Hal wondered if he’d even made an attempt. When it was Diana’s ideas on the table, roughly half of Bruce’s skepticism and reflexive contempt seemed to vanish.

“I didn’t try. Barda and Mister Miracle are excellent resources to have,” Bruce said.

“And you’ve got a crush on her,” Hal pointed out, snickering.

“Huh.” It came out as a sharp grunt, and the smile slid off Hal’s face.

“What?” he asked, his eyes darting from the viewscreen to the console.

“There’s a definite pattern in the financial irregularities,” Bruce sighed. “It has unpleasant implications. I’d hoped to give Kord better news.”

Hal tried to relax and failed, his good humor burned off by the knee-jerk alarm raised by Bruce’s sudden mood shift.

“Because you’re such a ray of sunshine?” he asked sourly.

“Because he’s been helpful and seems to be a genuinely decent man,” Bruce retorted, irritated. 

He frowned and looked at Hal for a long moment, and Hal glared back at him. 

“What?” he demanded.

“How long has it been since you got any rest?” Bruce asked.

“A while,” Hal admitted grudgingly. Bruce had somehow managed to wedge in a few hours on the way, sitting fully upright and without even looking stupid doing it. He’d gotten another three hours after Von had decamped and Hal had insisted on doing a thorough inspection of the Javelin by himself before take-off, when they’d both been perilously close to biting each other’s heads off. “Why?”

“You’re even crankier than usual.”

“I’m not cranky!” Hal sputtered. “You’re cranky.”

Bruce tilted his head, and Hal slumped in his chair. 

“I’m fine,” he muttered. “This is why we invented stimulants.”

“Take a nap, Lantern. I’ll wake you when we get to the outpost.”


	6. Chapter 6

Hal drifted out of a warm, peaceful haze and found himself staring at the satellite on the viewscreen. He was strongly tempted to roll over, close his eyes, and get another few minutes. If he’d been with anyone but Bruce, and he hadn’t known for a fact that he’d neglected to stock the Javelin with anything resembling coffee, he probably would have. If there was a way for a human to be over a week behind on sleep, he was pretty sure he’d found it a month ago.

“You were supposed to wake me,” he grumbled, making no move to get up. 

“I was going to, but they immediately sent a request to delay docking,” Bruce said. He was sitting in the pilot’s chair and looking as close to bored as Hal had ever seen him. “We received an automated broadcast requesting that we fall into orbit for another two hours while they complete a routine, precautionary decontamination procedure, to be precise. Since this isn’t an emergency, we’re not eligible to jump the line or link up now.”

“The line?” Hal asked. Of course there was a line. They were in the middle of nowhere, trying to board a satellite that could barely justify organic attendants, in order to relinquish custody of an artifact they weren’t supposed to have. Why wouldn’t there be a line?

“One decrepit and currently-debilitated mining vessel putting in for emergency repairs and one messenger craft.” Bruce tapped the armrests idly. “Feel free to go back to sleep, if you like.”

Two hours, Hal thought. It was even more tempting now. It wasn’t even that he was still tired, but two extra hours of sleep seemed like an unbelievable luxury at this point. And two hours of twiddling his thumbs or talking at Bruce while Bruce tried to pretend he couldn’t hear him didn’t seem terribly appealing. Bruce got to his feet and stretched, frowning at the line like he could somehow scowl the countdown into going faster. Hal realized that Bruce wasn’t wearing his cape roughly two seconds before it occurred to him that he hadn’t been able to find a blanket before he’d curled up on the bench seats and tried to sleep. The black fabric was surprisingly warm for its weight, and he tried to focus on that rather than on the way that seeing Bruce without it was somehow having roughly the same effect on him as seeing Bruce naked.

It was easy to forget how well-built Bruce was with the cape concealing most of it. Which was almost what it had been designed to do, so Hal figured that wasn’t such a huge oversight on his part, but without it he’d gone from a looming thunderhead to the archetype of every guy Hal had misspent his leave days trying to pick up in bars. Hal could feel his cock starting to thicken, and if Bruce caught him with a hard-on, even one that was perfectly explicable as morning wood, Hal was going to have to shove himself out the airlock and fly home.

Hal tried to remind himself that he didn’t even know what Bruce looked like, which didn’t help much when his brain helpfully focused on every muscular curve and plane that he could see without the cape obscuring them. He’d never memorized the infield fly rule, which now seemed like a mistake. Hal bit his lip and realized that he was probably staring. Of course, Bruce was still glowering out the viewport, so no harm, no foul. Unless it led to Hal getting a noticeable erection, in which case…. Hal tried to concentrate. 

Gotham. Bruce skulked around Gotham’s worst neighborhoods instead of going on dates. People who could take their masks off without onlookers shrieking in horror probably wouldn’t do that, right? Not to mention that it was Gotham, which at last count had enough people who looked like humans but were actually plant-monsters or reptiles or their own conjoined twin to start a monsters-only amateur baseball league. For all he knew, the third of Bruce’s face he could see was a prosthetic. Hell, for all he knew, Bruce was a robotic exoskeleton being piloted by a tiny alien with no sense of humor and an abiding need to see justice done. Hal seized on that image and clung to it. Clark had looked under the mask and recognized Zorgon the Fifth, exiled ruler of the Betelgeuse system, who he’d previously met at a Homeless Alien Coffee Klatch. They’d made small talk over decorating tips for impregnable alien fortresses.

“So, uh, why am I wrapped in your cape?” Hal asked, plucking at the material. He was reasonably sure he could give it back without embarrassing himself if he just stuck with the idea of cold steel and hydraulics under the control of a sentient guinea pig from outer space instead of warm, perfectly human flesh. “I didn’t even know it was detachable.”

“It would be a safety hazard if it wasn’t,” Bruce told him. “And because you were cold.”

“Which you could tell how, exactly?” Hal snorted. Trust Bruce to make it seem like a favor instead of a moment of human kindness.

“You were sleeping like you were cold,” Bruce said, pacing a little. His eyes never left the viewscreen, and Hal wondered if they were running up against a limit to Bruce’s seemingly-endless willingness to hang out staring at a screen. 

“I was sleeping like I was cold,” Hal repeated.

“When you’re comfortable, you sprawl out. Generally in the way that presents the biggest obstacle to anyone who’s trying to get anything done without waking you,” Bruce explained. “When you’re cold, you tend to curl up and keep your limbs close to your trunk.”

Hal’s cock twitched at the thought of Bruce watching him sleep, and he resolved to have a very long talk with his libido the second he had a bit of privacy. It wasn’t even that big a deal, he was sure. Just Bruce being his normal, completely ridiculous self: noting a consistency, logging it in the massive databank he called a brain, and moving on. He knew how Hal slept the same way he’d known how Hal took his coffee without being asked, or what flavor ice cream was Diana’s favorite, or how smart Oliver really was.

“So you’ve clocked all these hours staring at me while I sleep how? Because I don’t really sleep in places I don’t--” _Feel safe_ , he thought, but that suddenly seemed like a bad idea to say out loud, here and now. “--have some peace and quiet,” he grumbled. “Also, could you possibly be any creepier about it?”

“You treat... Mount Justice like a spare bedroom,” Bruce retorted, and Hal rolled his eyes at the way Bruce sounded put out at calling it that. “Arrow added the daybed after the third time he found you asleep at the breakroom table.”

“The third time he woke me up, you mean,” Hal said. It wasn’t much of a defense, but he really wasn’t _that_ bad about it. It had just become, at some point, easier to make the League headquarters his first stop when he got back from sector patrols, and then his own bed had seemed that much farther away.

Bruce crossed his arms over the back of the pilot’s chair and leaned on it, and Hal swallowed.

“So, um, you want your cape back?” he asked. “Because I’m pretty much awake.”

Bruce turned and gave him a measuring look, then crossed the cabin. Hal recognized that calling Bruce over had not been his brightest move and tried to talk himself down. Bruce would put the cape back on and go back to being a shadowy mass of vaguely-defined vengeance. Hal would be able to forget about the brief, presumably space-madness-induced bout of finding him attractive. Everything would be fine. Except that Bruce was dropping to one knee and gently lifting Hal’s chin and kissing him, and Hal was suddenly sure he was hallucinating.

Or not, he thought. Hallucinations didn’t get this vivid, that he knew of. Dreaming, then. He was dreaming. Bruce’s lips were soft, and his mouth was warm, and that was to be expected, but there was no way in hell Bruce’s hands would ever be that light when they touched someone like this. Hal couldn’t help melting anyway. He wrapped his hand around the back of Bruce’s neck, pulled him closer, and kissed him back with everything he had.

Hal wasn’t sure how long they spent like that, with Bruce’s tongue in his mouth and his hands digging into Bruce’s back, but he knew he felt ready to burst out of his skin by the time Bruce pulled him to his feet and pressed him against the cold metal of the wall. Hal grabbed Bruce’s ass and ground against him shamelessly, and Bruce slipped one hand between them and tugged Hal’s uniform open. Hal groaned and arched back against the hull when Bruce’s hand wrapped around his shaft, and he could feel everything else--questions about the Corps, worries about work, pining for Oliver--falling away for just a few minutes. The only things he needed to concentrate on were Bruce’s hand on his cock and Bruce’s mouth on his and Bruce’s body, strong and immovable, supporting him against the wall.

“Jesus Christ, you’re like a fucking oak tree, you know that?” Hal panted. He could probably climb Bruce, wrap his legs around him, the whole nine yards, and Bruce wouldn’t budge.

“Tell me what you want.” Bruce’s voice was a low growl right in his ear, and Hal hunched forward, wedging his face against Bruce’s throat and thrusting into his hand.

“More,” Hal snapped.

Bruce obliged, and Hal bucked and moaned as he came. He felt boneless and drained, and he was content to let Bruce prop him up for a long minute before he roused himself. Hal kissed him languidly and fumbled at Bruce’s belt.

“Don’t worry about it,” Bruce said, lowering him carefully back onto the bench.

Hal leaned against the backrest and straightened his suit, stopping cold when he saw the white stripe he’d left across the black kevlar covering Bruce’s stomach. His spent cock ached at the sight, and Hal found himself reaching for Bruce again automatically. Bruce’s lips twitched into a half-smile, and he slipped away before Hal registered that he was leaving.

“Where--?”

“To get cleaned up. You could probably use some coffee, if you’re not going back to sleep,” Bruce said over his shoulder.

Hal bit his tongue before he could blurt out any of the things he wanted to say. _Leave it. Let me lick it off you. Don’t bother yet, I want to do that a few more times._

“Coffee?” he asked, when he trusted himself again.

“Just instant, but it’s better than nothing.”

“You brought coffee.” Hal wanted to kiss him all over again.

“Of course I brought coffee,” Bruce said, shaking his head. “You’re useless without it.”

* * *

Hal settled into the pilot’s chair and fidgeted. It had taken him a few minutes to realize that Bruce had been able to see Hal staring at him like a piece of meat in the dull reflection of the viewscreen. Bruce clearly hadn’t minded; an unexpected make-out session followed by a handjob couldn’t be interpreted as an objection even by Bruce’s objectively weird standards. He still felt like a bit of a jerk about it, even if Bruce had immediately vetoed him drinking coffee in the cockpit. The price of caffeine had been ceding the chair for half an hour.

“So. Um. I feel like we should... talk about that?” Hal suggested, clearing his throat.

“Do you actually want to talk about it, or do you just have a vague notion that talking about it is what people do?” Bruce asked. He’d put the cape back on, and Hal was disappointed to find that not being able to see his ass had failed to erase the memory of what it felt like.

“I didn’t know you even liked men,” Hal ventured, ignoring the question.

“I prefer women. It’s an easy mistake to make.”

“So this is just blowing off some steam?” Hal pressed.

“I said I prefer women, not that I’m blind,” Bruce said.

Hal’s brows furrowed. “Did you just find the most backhanded way humanly possible to call me handsome?”

“Yes.”

“Ha! I knew you couldn’t resist my charms,” Hal snorted. “What about Diana, though?”

“She’s asked for a date, not my hand in marriage,” Bruce pointed out.

“So she’s not going to murder me?” Hal asked casually. It earned him a glare, which he was utterly willing to admit he deserved.

“She was planning to spend the weekend pursuing a young lady who’d caught her eye,” Bruce told him drily. “I’d have to conclude that you’d be safe even if she’d ever done anything to make that question a reasonable one.”

“Huh. I thought she was pretty stuck on you.”

“And you’re stuck on Arrow.” Bruce shrugged. “It doesn’t mean you can’t pursue the occasional bit of relief until you find your balls and tell him how you feel.”

Hal flushed and glared at him. “What difference does it make? He’s not into guys.”

“Has he told you that?”

“It’s not something straight guys usually feel the need to declare,” Hal said. Bruce could be annoyingly dense when he wasn’t being eerily spot-on.

“Are you perhaps familiar with the phrase ‘no homo’?” Bruce asked.

Hal crossed his arms. “Do you know something you’re not telling me, or are you just screwing with me because you don’t want to type up your findings and tell Kord that his beloved pet parakeet is the one selling his designs to hundred-year-old Nazis hiding in Vancouver?”

“One, you’re the one who insisted on talking. Two, so far as I’m aware, Green Arrow has only had relationships with women. I have not, however, had any particular reason to scrutinize his romantic history, so I certainly can’t rule anything out. Which means that, unless you’re _attached_ to the idea of suffering in silence, you should at least try. Three, if any of that was going on at Kord Industries, I would be in the process of documenting it extensively. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary support.”

Hal lapsed into silence. There was something vaguely depressing about Bruce encouraging him to spill his guts to Ollie this soon after getting him off. On the one hand, Hal definitely wasn’t looking for another ride on the over-attachment merry-go-round that had characterized his dating before he’d met Carol. On the other, Tom had kind of nailed him on misinterpreting obsessive as loving. This, he told himself, was just his lizard-brain feeling rejected because Bruce wasn’t being a possessive asshole. Hal ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. He’d skipped spending a weekend screwing around on the track with Tom for this mission. It had been worth it in more ways than one, but he missed having free time to kill with Tom and Carol. It had been months since he’d been shotgun in a hot-rod with Tom at the wheel, and Carol had had to find herself a new wingman within weeks of him getting the ring. There was a reason they were both exes, sure, but there was also a reason he’d trust them both with his life. They’d been the only two people who’d known he was Green Lantern until Bruce had decided to inspect his ring thirty seconds after they’d met.

“So not his parakeet,” Hal said. “Hmm. Devoted secretary? Fiancee? Guy who saved his dad’s ass in the war and has been like a second father to him his entire life?”

“Stop being morbid,” Bruce said. “Business partner and best friend.”

“Rough.” Hal’s gut twisted in sympathy.

“Very,” Bruce agreed. “He should be able to ameliorate the damage if he acts quickly, but he radically underestimated the scale of the embezzlement.”

“You think he will?” Hal asked. If Tom or Carol ever turned on him like that, he’d probably spend at least a week staring at the ceiling, living off Haagen-Dazs, and wondering how the hell he’d been so wrong. Or go on a week-long bender and get into the mother of all barfights before landing in the drunk-tank on a public disturbance charge. He hadn’t been paying that much attention to Kord once he’d set eyes on the Javelin, but the man seemed like a soft touch for a CEO.

“What?” Bruce asked blankly.

“Act quickly. Get his ass in gear.”

“For his workers’ sake, I hope so.”

“Really?” Hal sighed. “That’s your answer?”

Bruce tilted his head. “Kord’s a fighter as well as a talented inventor. He’ll rebuild, even if he loses this company. If it folds, that’s a major disruption to the local economy and a sharp, sudden spike in the labor pool. Less severe blows have sent bigger towns into socio-economic tailspins. He’ll be fine. His workforce might not be.”

“Okay, don’t take this the wrong way,” Hal said, getting to his feet and stretching. There was enough coffee left for one more cup, and they were close enough to home that he wasn’t going to torture himself. “But since when does the ninja academy offer courses in economics and accountancy?”

“Since the 1950s,” Bruce said absently. Hal figured the odds of Bruce meaning it were an even split.

“Because I’m beginning to get the feeling that you’re like a rogue auditor who expanded his purview to include muggers and smash-and-grab guys,” Hal continued. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I feel like we shouldn’t constantly be five bucks short in the pizza fund if you can tell who’s got their hand in the cookie jar when they’re a CFO and actively trying to hide it.”

“The pizza fund is short because Arrow doesn’t carry as much cash as he should and doesn’t see a need to kick in since he just orders it out of his own pocket most of the time anyway.” Bruce gave him a long look. “You might actually get somewhere with him, if you’ve got a few spare hours to have the argument about it.”

“You’ve taken it up with him. You have actually talked to him about not kicking in for pizza, even though you know he’s already picking up more than his fair share of pizzas.” Hal stifled a laugh. “Jesus, B. You never even show up for pizza night. What do you care?”

“I don’t,” Bruce said, “but it drives Shayera up a wall, and I get the sense from her movie selections that Thanagarian honor is easily offended and favors bloody retribution.”

“And you’ve been showing her westerns.” Hal didn’t bother biting back a laugh at that. He needed to buy Clark a beer once they got back to Earth. It was like pulling teeth to get Bruce to talk, but the results were occasionally worth it.


	7. Chapter 7

Hal shouldered his way into the training room and held the door open as Oliver swept past him. He’d been on the fence about it when Oliver had suggested a whole room just for screwing around in, as Ollie had put it, but it had let everyone practice together as their inclinations took them. Hal was pretty sure he’d even seen Diana and Bruce heading in one day with a pile of blunted batarangs and Diana’s practice bracelets. Compared to the sullen implosion that most of their mandatory drills had turned into, the training room had been an unqualified success.

“Come on, spill it,” Oliver said, twirling his bow. “You spent like a week cooped up in a tiny spaceship with Dracula. Did he try to recruit you into the nightmarish world of the undead?”

“It was barely two days,” Hal scolded him. “And we both know he’s probably not a vampire.”

Hal sent a half-dozen discs of green light ricocheting off the walls down-range and watched as Oliver effortlessly put arrows through each of them in rapid succession. There was an economical grace to his actions that Hal found in equal parts attractive and enviable. When it came down to it, he was a brawler without his ring. Oliver was a hunter, all poise and precision. Even when he was out of arrows and down to using his fists, it showed. Hell, it showed even when he was just standing there, waiting for Hal to make up his damn mind about what constructs he wanted to make next.

“More importantly, did he _succeed_ in recruiting you into the nightmarish world of the undead?” Oliver demanded impatiently. “Because I’m throwing a huge party this weekend, and it would suck if you can’t leave the house. I have the best pool. There’s a waterfall.”

“This weekend, huh?” Hal asked.

“Yup.”

Oliver paused, arrow nocked, and glanced at him. Hal sucked at his teeth and tried to think of something he hadn’t done before. A moment later, a series of green pendulums were swinging from one wall to the other, each one moving at its own speed.

“Nice.” Oliver’s face hardened in concentration, then relaxed once he’d settled on his strategy. “Did he just give you some brochures about the advantages of being a vampire and leave it at that? Because I don’t see him being a low-pressure pitch kind of guy, but Supes might have made him tone it down.”

“He was surprisingly reasonable,” Hal said. He didn’t want to talk about Bruce, not least because it made it difficult not to think about Bruce’s hands on him. “He only strongly implied that an alien air traffic controller was incompetent instead of stating it outright, and he refrained from freeze-raying an undercover Green Lantern even though he had it coming.”

Oliver took out two pendulums with one arrow and held up his hand for a high-five. Hal arched an eyebrow.

“You’re seriously going to leave me hanging on this?” Ollie pouted.

“Six left to go, man,” Hal said. “Earn it.”

“Screw you, that was an awesome shot.” Oliver chuckled and raised his bow again. “I didn’t know Lanterns could go undercover.”

“Neither did I.” Hal watched Oliver’s arms and back flex, then followed the shot as it hit the farthest pendulum dead center. “Apparently they’re really, really undercover.”

“Or that Batman had a freeze-ray,” Oliver added. “Is it bat-shaped?”

“I guess he got it from somebody called Mr. Freeze,” Hal informed him, “so no.”

“Oh, that dude.” Oliver made a face. “I hate that dude. Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to lose a guy because he turned the whole street into an impromptu ice-skating rink? I landed on my ass right in front of a bunch of tourists, too. Quiver spills, arrows everywhere, a million pictures all over the internet, it feels like I’ve about busted my tailbone, and you know what he says?”

Hal thought for a moment. “Chill out?” he hazarded. “Have an ice day? Cool it?”

“No!” Ollie hit two more targets. “And those are absolutely, unbelievably terrible. Never swap the green out for an ice theme. I mean, I appreciate the effort, because it’s more than I got out of that guy, but they’re terrible.” He moved a foot to the left and narrowed his eyes at the remaining three. “‘Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.’ _That’s_ what he said to me.”

“Creepy,” Hal said, leaning against the wall. But then, that was the kind of guy Bruce threw down with, wasn’t it? He tried to shake off the thought. If anyone could deal with Gotham’s underworld, it was a man who communicated in growls and glares and thought a bat costume was a reasonable fashion choice.

“It’s Sartre,” Oliver grunted. “But he said it like he was commenting on the time of day, and then he took off on a snowmobile. I mean, who _does_ that? Bust out with something like that and then just take off like it’s nothing? Not to mention I wound up with hypothermia and had to miss a club opening.”

Hal snorted. “What were you even doing in Gotham, anyway?”

It wasn’t that Bruce would sooner take a swan dive off a high-rise than ask for help, but he was pretty sure Bruce would sooner take a swan dive off a high-rise than ask for help. Especially from Oliver.

“Do I look like a crazy person?” he asked, lining up his shot. “Clock King decided to come home for the weekend. I guess getting punched in the face by a nosferatu and carted off to Arkham gets old after the fourth or fifth time. Who’d have guessed? So I’m expecting like ‘Time flies!’ and bolas with huge stopwatches or something, only he’s brought a new friend along, so I get a German existentialist stand-up routine and frostbite.”

Oliver gnawed his lip absently, and Hal tried not to be too obvious about noticing. Oliver relaxed and released the bowstring. Hal gave a low whistle when the arrow punched through all three pendulums. Ollie slung the bow across his back and held up his hands triumphantly.

“Earn it, my ass,” he laughed. Hal gave him a crooked grin and high-fived him. “So, what did your undercover brother do that was so awful?”

Hal thought of Von draping his slender yellow arm across Bruce’s shoulders and frowned. The idea of trying to make Oliver understand what had been so obnoxious about it in the face of Oliver’s natural inclination to find Bruce being discomfitted hilarious was somehow unappealing.

“He was just a huge dick about everything,” Hal sighed.

“Like, Batman-levels of dickery or like Luthor when he’s not doing anything technically illegal but he’s still a Lake-Michigan-sized douche?” Oliver asked. He collected his arrows, and Hal watched him with a wry smile. Bruce might not be wrong about much, but he was wrong about Oliver acting stupid. Just because he was persistent in a way that wasn’t overbearing didn’t mean it was a feint.

“Split the difference,” Hal said. “Hey, I was wondering. You think you might want to grab dinner with me sometime?”

“Rack ‘em up, Hal.” Oliver stretched and grinned at him. “And didn’t we just do that like a week ago? Not that I mind. Oh, hey--we can see if Superman wants to come this time.”

“I meant more like a date,” Hal clarified. His heart sped up as he watched Oliver’s face fall.

“Oh. Um, sorry, dude. I’m not into guys. I mean, if I were, I would totally say yes, because seriously, you’re way hot for a dude,” Oliver said quickly. “But, uh, yeah. I’m not. Into dudes.”

“I see.” Hal tried to keep his expression neutral. It wasn’t unexpected news, and Oliver seemed genuinely contrite about it, which Hal thought was a fairly good sign that he wasn’t offended or disgusted. “Sorry. I didn’t--”

“No, no. Don’t sweat it,” Oliver told him. He gave him an exaggerated shrug. “It happens. Especially when you’ve got an ass as sweet as mine.”

Hal rolled his eyes and shook his head. Trust Oliver to take it as a compliment and move on.

“Yup. That’s it,” he agreed.

“Which will be in a speedo for the party, in case you were ambivalent about the invitation,” Oliver continued. He was talking too fast and gesturing a little too sharply, and Hal held up his hands.

“Ollie,” he said gently, “I’ll be there.”

“Seriously, though, are we cool?” Oliver asked, looking away. There was a faint blush on his cheeks. “I mean, we’re still friends, right?”

“Of course we’re still friends,” Hal assured him, wondering where this was all coming from. Worst case scenario, he’d assumed Oliver would be the one giving him the cold shoulder. “I’m not twelve. I mean, I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t enjoy your company.”

“Sorry,” Oliver sighed. “You surprised me a little. And I overcompensate, or at least that’s what my therapist tells me. And she’d know, right? Honestly, I figured you’d be Double-Oh-Sevening all over hot aliens and leaving us mere mortals in the space-dust.”

“It’s a little less glamorous than all that,” Hal confessed. The rough grope-session with Bruce in the Javelin’s cabin had been the sum total of his interstellar action, and while he wasn’t complaining, it was hardly the sort of thing that could bump Oliver down to consolation-prize status. “Mostly I get shot at by monsters the size of buildings and called a dumbass by my COs. The hot aliens tend to either outrank me or need help from the Corps. So, you know, making a pass would be either hot but a terrible idea or completely out of line.”

“No goons with steel jaws?” Oliver prompted. “No molls with divided loyalties and the cleavage to match?”

“I think you might be the last guy on the planet to use ‘moll’ unironically, and no. None of that,” Hal said, laughing. “Steel jaws would actually be an improvement over slime-spit and psionic beams. And I didn’t mean to ambush you.”

“You didn’t.” Oliver gestured at the range. “Make with the targets, will you? I mean, I’ve had marriage proposals that were bigger ambushes than that, and of all the things you should be able to see coming, an engagement’s gotta be one of them, right?”

“You haven’t.” Hal concentrated for a moment, then sent a shower of green pingpong balls bouncing off the walls.

“I have,” he said grimly. “ _Twice._ I mean, you know that Oscar Wilde quote about how losing both parents is just carelessness?”

“Sure,” Hal told him easily. He could look it up later, and he didn’t want to derail Oliver when he was on a tear.

“I didn’t even think I was dating the second one seriously.” Ollie sent a half-dozen arrows slicing through as many tiny round projectiles. “You know, I’ve actually got an acquaintance I could introduce you to. He’s basically like if I wasn’t a superhero. Less fantastic ass, worse with banter, but definitely likes guys. Plus he’s sort of a space-cadet, so you can blow off as many dates as you need to on Lantern business and pretty much never get called on it.”

“Why don’t we put that idea down as a maybe?” Hal asked. He definitely didn’t need Oliver setting him up with empty-headed socialites out of a misguided sense of guilt.

“Come on, man. I feel bad. I’ve got the League’s most eligible bachelor asking me out on a date barely twenty-four hours after he had to put up with an alien shapeshifter turning into Batman and doing the ‘Stop copying me’ thing until it got so old it started being funny again,” Oliver told him. “And I don’t even have a way to be less than scorchingly hot while turning him down. At least let me fix you up with a sugar-daddy.”

“Um.” Hal rubbed his forehead as Oliver kept shooting targets.

“That’s totally what happened, wasn’t it?” he prompted. “Two Batmans just trolling the hell out of each other while you tried to figure out what was going on, or whether Superman would let you get away with just ditching both of them.” Oliver paused, the smile freezing on his face. “Shit. Please tell me you’re sure you brought the right one back.”

“That’s not even close to what happened,” Hal said. “It’s just a horrible mental picture, that’s all.”

“Well, yeah. Two Batmans. Batmen? What’s the appropriate plural for a Batman, anyway?” Oliver waved a pair of arrows in the air before nocking both of them. “Watch this.”

“Two in one go?” Hal asked, leaning back. “And does it matter?”

“Hell yes, two in one go. One of these days I’m going to set up normal targets and show you my favorite party trick. I can actually hit three bulls-eyes at once.” Oliver fired both arrows, hitting two balls with one arrow and one with the other. He did a little fist-pump. “And of course it matters. I mean, maybe not for Batman, but there’s a whole island full of Amazons, right? What if they decide to bust open the mythological super-armory? Is it Wonder Womans or Wonder Women? I don’t want to look like a rube in front of an army of ladies that look like Diana, you know.”

“Naturally. We’re hypothetically faced off against an army of women that fight like Diana, and you want to make sure they understand that you’re a man of the world,” Hal said, nodding easily.

The pingpong balls vanished, and Hal set up a row of stationary targets.

“Well, I mean, duh,” Oliver scoffed. He produced three arrows with a flourish. “In the ten seconds I’d have left in that scenario, I’d want to come off as debonaire, go out the way I lived.”

“Surrounded by scantily-clad women who are laughably out of your league and really angry with you?” Shayera asked from behind them.

“Got it in one,” Oliver said smoothly. “Give the lady a prize.”

Hal raised his eyebrows at Shayera in silent question, and Oliver glared at him.

“Pay attention,” he chided. “You’re probably going to be the only human on the planet sober enough to remember seeing me do this.”

“Well, I’m honored, then,” Hal told him.

“Damn right,” Oliver agreed. He took a deep breath and then slowly let it out, his hands and eyes steady. When he let the arrows fly, all three hit their targets dead center with a satisfying _thunk_ , and Hal couldn’t help being impressed. Oliver talked a big game, but he could back it up. Hal tried to tamp down on the urge to kiss the stupid grin off his face when Oliver turned back to face them.

He bowed with a flourish, and Shayera gave him a round of half-hearted applause.

“Bravo,” Hal chimed in.

“So, what can I do for you this fine day?” Oliver asked, turning to Shayera.

She crossed her arms and arched her eyebrows, and her wings folded more tightly against her back. “You don’t remember.”

“Um.” Oliver cocked his head, and Hal sighed. “Give me a hint?”

“Unbelievable,” Shayera gritted, shaking her head.

“On that note, I’m going to go finish the inventory Superman asked me to do last week,” Hal said, waving to them both.

“You’re bailing?” Oliver asked. “Now, when I need you?” Shayera glowered at him, and he snapped his fingers. “Wait! I promised to start archery lessons today, didn’t I? See, I didn’t forget.”

“ _You_ asked _me_ if I wanted to learn how to use a bow,” she snapped, “and it was only this morning.”

“In my defense, it was mostly a ploy to get you to teach me how to shoot that thing that looks like a bow but fires electric bolts,” Oliver confessed. He waved back as Hal slipped out the door and left them arguing about whether or not a humanoid who lacked flight muscles could manage the weapon.

Hal let out the breath he’d been half-holding and let his shoulders slump. Oliver wasn’t interested. It stung less than he thought it would, probably because he’d anticipated Oliver not being interested resulting in things being awkward around him. If it was disappointing to have fallen for a straight guy, it was a relief to have underestimated how cool Oliver could be when it came to unrequited romantic interest. Then again, Hal thought, the guy was rich, handsome, and an unrepentant womanizer. If anyone had logged enough time letting people down gently, it would be Oliver. 

And if Hal didn’t have to pick between keeping his mouth shut and waiting for the crush to burn itself out and keeping his friendship, well. It would fizzle out eventually, and in the meantime he didn’t have to keep biting his tongue and wondering ‘what if?’. He could just give Oliver a bit of space, and Oliver would understand why Hal didn’t want a close-up view of him sucking on a supermodel’s face at the party. Ollie had been the first person in the League he’d really clicked with, and he was still the one Hal spent the most time with. He was also the first guy he’d really seen himself having a relationship with since he and Tom had broken up. Not that he’d thought seriously about dating since he’d gotten the ring. Oliver had hit the nail on the head when he’d talked about setting him up with a guy who was enough of a ditz that Hal could run off to play space-cop or respond to a Justice League call and not get asked about it. 

There were only three people who knew exactly who he was twenty-four hours a day, but at least everyone who only knew him as a superhero knew that he had a day-job. Dating someone as Green Lantern meant only having to explain that he had to get back to the job that came with a paycheck. Dating someone as Hal Jordan meant having to come up with--and remember--story after story after story to explain everything from surprise injuries to dates cut short or missed entirely to week-long absences. Anyone with half a brain would call it quits well before Hal knew them well enough to trust them with a life-and-death secret like what he was jetting off to do. And someone who didn’t notice wasn’t someone he could really trust, but he’d at least be spared the screaming matches and messy break-up.

Hal sighed and punched in the passcode for the storage room. If there was anything that could take his mind off romantic issues, it was inventory. For a team whose powers were mostly self-generated, they’d certainly started going through a lot of supplies.


	8. Chapter 8

Hal cleared his throat and leaned back. Bruce had been unpleasantly silent throughout his entire summary, leaving him to pace around the room and fuss with the coffee maker like a nervous teenager. Hal had only managed to keep from snapping at him by pretending that Bruce had surreptitiously fallen asleep over a cup of unpleasant sludge whose packaging insisted it was a protein shake, and the whole thing was a trial run.

“So, what do you think?” Hal asked. “Keeping in mind that Superman pretty much said you had to.”

Bruce looked from him to the pile of medical supply catalogs and back like he was firmly of the opinion that Hal had lost his mind. There was something ridiculous about Bruce deploying his patented bat-glare in front of a row of Ikea cabinets full of coffee, ramen packets, and paper plates, but Hal thought it might be a good time to keep that to himself. With Wally passed out in the guest room and Shayera and J’onn on monitor-duty, the break room had seemed like as good a place to have this discussion as any.

“Exactly how did this conversation even begin?” Bruce demanded after a long moment.

Hal shrugged. He’d almost expected Bruce to get up and walk out, possibly to find Clark and read him the riot act or, equally possibly, to just go back to Gotham and never come back. Hal wasn’t oblivious to the way the whole idea smacked of mission-creep, and Bruce hadn’t made a big secret out of his reluctance to join up in the first place.

“I got stuck on inventory this time,” Hal told him. “We’re going through first-aid paraphernalia like mad. Who knew, right? A crew full of people who are only _nigh_ -invulnerable getting into grudge-matches with violent weirdos on a regular basis use things like burn cream and gauze at a rate slightly higher than the average population.”

He folded himself into a chair and tipped it back on two legs, wondering if Bruce would tell him to keep it on the floor. He got a thin-lipped snort instead, and Hal shot him a beatific smile.

“So I brought it to Superman, told him we might want to look into keeping more of it on hand than we have been. He apparently then went to Arrow and asked about adding a minor medical suite. I guess the basic plan is that instead of leaving everyone to fend for themselves with walk-in clinics or home remedies for non-emergencies, which in retrospect does seem like kind of a dick move, we could tap one or two of the heroes who somehow found time to go to, I don’t know, heroic medical school or whatever for x-ray and bloodwork interpretation and cut out some of the guess-work.” 

Hal tipped his chair back even farther, until he was leaning it against the counter. The black cowl disappeared behind the stack of catalogs, leaving only the the points visible over the mass of paper. 

“I mean, we’ve got the internet, we’ve got cameras and microphones, we’re set up for videoconferencing,” he continued. “All we really need are machines to spit out the data in the first place. Arrow loved the idea. I guess he’d had a similar plan at one time for the, um, Arrow Cave, only it wasn’t really feasible because of all the projectile weapons and him being able to afford doctors who don’t care how he broke his face this time so long as he doesn’t mix his pain meds with alcohol.”

Hal could practically hear Bruce glowering at him from the other side of the table.

“And I came up in all this how?” Bruce finally asked grudgingly.

Hal reached back and grabbed a bag of cookies off the counter. Wally had once again refrained from quite finishing the bag, even though he’d inhaled ninety-five percent of the contents in the time it had taken Hal to suggest maybe he should catch a nap before heading home. Hal took one and waved the bag at Bruce, rattling the last cookie until Bruce snatched the bag, neatly folded the top shut, and put it on the table.

“No clue, B,” Hal confessed around a mouthful of half-chewed cookie. “You could wait until he gets back from negotiating with the moon-men for Neil Armstrong’s safe return if you want to ask him.”

“He’s at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Metropolis,” Bruce said. “What, precisely, did he say?”

“For me to get a list and a basic design from you,” Hal said. “And for you to give Arrow a ballpark figure for approval. And if it’s not too much trouble by Wednesday.”

“Wednesday,” Bruce said flatly.

“Uh-huh.” Hal picked up the cookie bag and shook it at him again. “You sure?”

“Am I sure I don’t want half a stale, broken, store-brand cookie.”

“Well, when you put it like that.” Hal popped the last one into his mouth, wadded up the bag, and threw it at the trash can. It bounced off the rim and landed on the floor. He swept it up with a beam of green light and dropped it into the container. “You snooze, you lose. And your schedule’s gotta be clear enough for this, right? He’s probably got access to your social calendar and everything. Sunday, monitor duty. Monday, punch muggers in the face. Tuesday, foil purse-snatchings. Wednesday, prowl public parks in a misguided effort to make the public feel safe.”

“Why did he have you tell me all this?” Bruce asked, not bothering to acknowledge Hal’s speculation.

Hal figured that Clark had told him to take it up with Bruce because it was more Hal’s idea than he’d necessarily let on with his explanation, and Clark had more been signing on with it than orchestrating it. Either that, or Clark had thought Hal had a better shot at getting a yes out of Bruce.

“Because if I tell you all this while he’s smiling and waving and laser-visioning a ribbon in half, you’re sitting here making that face at me instead of him.”

“Did either of them happen to leave the facility blueprints?” Bruce asked. His posture had shifted from its earlier stiffness to something that Hal couldn’t characterize as interest, but maybe was on the verge of resignation. Hal wondered if they should start awarding achievement badges based on being able to figure out Bruce’s moods from micro-changes in body language. The man was a damn cipher when he wanted to be.

“Nope,” Hal sighed. “You need them?”

“I need to be sure the electrical’s up to the strain it will be under,” he said. “Assuming we do this.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Hal pointed out, smiling. 

Bruce waved one gauntleted hand without looking up from the pamphlets. “It has its merits.”

“Shayera has a copy somewhere. I think Arrow had to give her one to look over before she’d believe something built underground was safe for habitation. I guess Thanagarian architecture favors aerie-type structures instead of, as she put it, ‘mole-holes.’” Hal rocked forward again. “So.” He cleared his throat. Compared to the medical suite, this would be a gamble. “I was thinking.”

Hal waited for Bruce to ask the inevitable, arch “Really?” and then plowed on when he didn’t.

“Arrow’s having a party this weekend.”

“No.”

Hal blinked at him. “Yes, he is.”

“No, I can’t cover your on-call shift,” Bruce clarified. He flipped through one of the catalogs and dog-eared a handful of pages.

Hal felt his jaw drop, then quickly shut his mouth. He _was_ on call, wasn’t he? How the hell had Bruce even remembered that?

“I was trying to invite you, not ask you to cover for me,” he said, his brows furrowing. “Asshole.”

Bruce stared at him like he’d said something remarkably stupid, even for him, and then went back to the catalog. Hal flushed when it registered.

“Not _in costume_. Jesus. That thing does come off, right? And it’s going to be a huge party. You could just show up, tell everyone you’re John Smith, nab some appetizers and free beer. Nobody would know it’s you. That’s like, the whole point of wearing a mask when you’re out fighting crime and everything, right? You can go out and have a drink with your friends without someone getting in your face over bat-business? I thought it might be a nice change of pace. You could skulk around in some place with shrubbery and sunlight instead of piles of garbage and smog,” he said peevishly. “Maybe wordlessly intimidate some pretty rich girls who want to dance instead of career-criminals who want to stab you. You could even impersonate a caterer and scope out the mansion in case you ever need to...” Hal paused. “Actually, you know what? Don’t impersonate a caterer. Forget I even suggested that. Just maybe turn up and have a good time.”

“I’m going to be busy,” Bruce said evenly, like Hal hadn’t just made an ass of himself. 

It was getting to be a habit with Bruce, he thought. He ran up against that wall of indifference and needed to get a reaction out of him. And he had, hadn’t he? A hell of a reaction. Of course, once Hal had proven something was possible, he had the unfortunate tendency to try to push it as far as he could. It was what made him so good as a test pilot. He wasn’t sure whether it was an advantage or a problem when it came to Bruce.

“With what?” Hal asked.

“Personal matters.”

Hal frowned. “How did you know I’d be on-call during the party?”

“Please tell me that being able to determine that one block of time falls within another, larger block of time doesn’t strike you as a particularly impressive skill,” Bruce said. He rifled through another catalog before tossing it into the recycling bin. “Though I suppose that would explain your attendance record and chronic tardiness.”

“He already invited you to the party, didn’t he?” Hal asked.

“No.” Bruce glanced at him. “I assume your invitation means things went well?”

Hal blushed for an entirely different reason this time. The one time Bruce would make a polite personal inquiry, and it would be over this.

“I struck out, but he still wants to be bros,” Hal muttered. “He is, in case you ever need to refer back to it, not into guys.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Bruce said, going back to the catalog. 

Hal had an irrational urge to snatch it out of his hands. “Did you ask me that just to distract me from asking how you knew about the party?”

“No.” Bruce gave him an exasperated look. “If I’d wanted to distract you from that, I’d have asked you why you suddenly think we need a medical wing.”

Hal dug his fingers into his scalp, counted to ten, and refrained from asking Bruce if Clark had talked to him already or if Bruce just _knew_. He was willing to put money on it being the latter.

“Because we get injured a lot, and one of these days we’re going to just drag the fight into the ER if we can’t deal with a certain amount of those injuries ourselves, in relative safety,” he said. “And I don’t know about you, but I would really prefer that not happen.” He glowered at Bruce. “Now, the party. _Please_ tell me you didn’t really infiltrate the caterers.”

“I picked up chatter about a plan to rob it. As it so happens, criminals with poor organizational skills tend to generate a great deal of noise while trying to agree on the details of a group outing.” 

Bruce discarded another three catalogs in quick succession.

“And you…?”

Bruce stared at him, waiting for him to finish the question.

“Warned Arrow?” Hal prompted.

“Tipped off their probation officers,” Bruce said firmly. 

“You didn’t even mention it to Arrow, did you?” Hal sighed. “Goddamnit, B.”

Oliver would flip if he found out. It wasn’t that he was territorial, really. It was just that he really didn’t like _Bruce_ poking around on his turf. It was like half his normal good humor evaporated every time he and Bruce were expected to work together on their own terms. And Bruce somehow turned into an even bigger jerk under the same conditions. Or maybe, Hal thought, it was a team effort, with both of them acting in concert to make everything five times more difficult than it had to be. Whichever way the blame got portioned out, they’d stomped on each other’s toes enough times that Oliver at least had developed a Pavlovian response to Bruce interfering in Star City.

“No. If I had, he’d have insisted on intervening himself. If there’s anything Arrow doesn’t need, it’s another round of obvious bruises to make stupid excuses for in front of his entire social circle.” Bruce grimaced. “If you’re feeling ambitious, he could probably use a friendly suggestion that he try to keep his shirt on around crowds when he has healing injuries.”

“So you just made that call for him,” Hal said.

“I don’t know that it required a memo from me,” Bruce told him, shrugging. “It’s amazing the extent to which the judiciary frowns on parolees engaging in criminal conspiracy. Almost as amazing as the extent to which the police are willing to provide extra protection for rich, politically-connected targets of violent crime.”

“Which is why you’re definitely not going to show up and lurk suspiciously in the shadows,” Hal surmised.

“An officer I respect is slated to be released from the hospital over the weekend,” Bruce finally admitted.

Hal put his face in his hands. 

“How hard is it to say one of your friends is laid up?” he asked. “I mean, would it kill you to say that you have friends and care about them?”

“We’re not friends.”

“I’ll just assume from that that it would, in fact, kill you to say it,” Hal sighed. The idea of Bruce having friends but being unwilling to call them that fit. He still insisted on referring to Clark as a colleague half the time. And Bruce having friends in the department would explain why he was so willing to just call the cops on things he didn’t want to deal with himself.

Bruce held up two more of the catalogs. “And something’s just come up that needs to be done by Wednesday.”

“So this is my fault now,” Hal said. “That’s the angle you’re playing.”

Bruce tilted his head and waited for Hal to realize what he’d said. Hal felt like half the conversation was happening around him.

“I didn’t come up with the deadline,” he protested. “That part definitely was not me. I’m not even sure why they settled on Wednesday!”

“Enjoy the party, Lantern.” 

Bruce shook his head and got to his feet. Hal almost missed the way the edges of his lips had turned up in what was, for Bruce, a smile. Hal was sliding out of his chair and pressing Bruce back against the counter before he could tell himself what a bad idea it was. It even _felt_ like a bad idea when he grabbed Bruce’s head and shoved his tongue into Bruce’s mouth, and Bruce calmly pushing him away just confirmed it. Those few minutes on the Javelin had been a one-time thing, born of boredom and frustration.

“Meet me in the storage room in five minutes,” Bruce said, walking away.

“What?” Hal asked, staring at him.

“The only room in the facility with a lock on the door?” Bruce reminded him. He swept out, leaving Hal to stare after him.

He didn’t even try to talk himself out of following after two minutes, which was how he knew it was an even worse idea than he’d originally thought. They weren’t stuck on a ship in deep space this time. He couldn’t blame enforced inactivity or stress or the unexpectedness of finding Bruce attractive. Lock on the door or not, there was the chance of someone walking in on them. Every conversation they had played like an argument in slow motion, with him fighting tooth and nail for every inch Bruce gave and Bruce pushing right back into areas he had no right to intrude on. Hal didn’t care.

He tapped in the code for the door and let it swing shut behind him. Bruce was on him in a heartbeat, hands bunching the fabric of his uniform and pulling him close, kissing him hungrily. It was how he’d imagined Bruce would be, a far cry from the careful treatment on the Javelin. Hal took it as permission to respond in kind and shoved him back against the wall, his hands roving over Bruce’s body. There was too much armor in the way to make it genuinely worthwhile, but there was a strange thrill to just being able to touch him, and Hal didn’t stop. He nipped at Bruce’s lower lip and nudged his mouth open, and suddenly Bruce had his hands under his thighs and was lifting him.

Hal paused and angled his head back. “I can’t believe I’m asking this, because it is incredibly hot that you can do that, but…”

“Put you down?” Bruce asked.

“Yeah.”

Bruce slid his hands up until he was holding Hal against him but not supporting him, and Hal got his feet back on the ground.

“Better?”

“Mm-hmm.” Hal flexed under Bruce’s hands and grinned at him. “Didn’t get enough of me last time, huh?”

“You started it this time,” Bruce pointed out.

Hal kissed him again, wondering if Bruce would let him peel him out of the suit. Being plastered to him without being able to do much beyond that was a tease all by itself. Hal was already hard, and it took him a second to realize that Bruce had stopped moving.

“Wh--”

“The door,” he snapped, stepping away.

It swung open behind them, and Bruce picked up a packet of cold compresses while Hal was still silently cursing his luck. He scrambled for one of the clipboards they theoretically used to keep track of who’d used what but never really bothered with.

“Are you sure we haven’t just misplaced the last box?” Bruce asked. His tone was dead normal, and the incongruity of it made Hal want to laugh.

“Uh, guys?” Wally asked, yawning. “Why are you standing in here with the lights off?”

“Hmm?” Bruce turned. “So they are. The lenses compensate automatically for the light level.” He glanced at Hal. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I figured you were just being a douche and didn’t want to give you the satisfaction,” Hal replied. “Not to mention I’ve got the galaxy’s best flashlight.”

The ring pulsed bright green, and Wally covered his eyes. Hal held his breath and willed his erection to subside. Wally wasn’t stupid; he was going to notice the weird angle Hal was holding the clipboard at soon enough.

“Ow. Okay, okay. I’m sorry I asked,” Wally grumbled. “Geez, guys, I just woke up.” 

“Did you need something, Flash?” Bruce prompted.

“Medicine cabinet in the guest room’s out of aspirin,” he said.

Bruce glanced at Hal, who shook his head. “Don’t look at me. I just counted everything. I didn’t go around restocking it, because nobody asked me to and it’s not part of doing inventory. And Arrow’s the one who orders more.”

Bruce gave him a theatrical sigh and swept past him toward one of the racks closer to the door. He plucked a bottle of pills off the shelf and handed it to Wally.

“Thanks,” Wally sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.

“So long as you’re up, I don’t suppose you could check the rest of the base for a stray box of those chemical cold-packs?” Hal asked casually.

“Um, I was just on my way out,” Wally said quickly. They found themselves looking at empty space a second later, with the door swinging closed.

Hal shook his head. “The cowl has automatic light filters, huh?”

“Of course not,” Bruce said. “I could never get them to work properly at the size I’d need for daily wear.” 

Hal found himself herded back up against one of the shelves, and he hooked his fingers into Bruce’s belt.

“So, if we get interrupted again, can we just not stop?” he asked. “And I mean that seriously. I don’t care if it’s a fucking marching band. I’m about to come in my pants here.”

Bruce smiled wolfishly and bent his head to suck at Hal’s throat. He tugged at Hal’s uniform.

“Off,” Bruce ordered.

Hal hissed when Bruce’s teeth closed around the delicate skin where neck met jaw, just hard enough to make him feel it. He let the suit disappear and started when Bruce’s hands slid under his t-shirt. He hadn’t even realized Bruce had ditched the gauntlets, and now warm, callused fingers were tracing his spine and sweeping down over his hips. Bruce paused at his waistband, then undid the fly of his jeans with swift, practiced motions. Hal blinked when Bruce dropped to his knees, and for a brief moment Hal remembered what it had been like when he’d flown solo for the very first time. Then Bruce’s tongue was sliding across his foreskin, and coherent thought was suddenly impossible.

Bruce’s hands were on his hips, and Bruce’s mouth was perfect and everywhere at once, and Hal locked his fingers around the edge of the shelving behind him and tried not to come too quickly. He was panting and half-undone by the time Bruce sucked him hard and slow and flattened his tongue against the underside of his shaft, and it was too much. Hal groaned and spilled. He felt like he was floating as Bruce kissed his stomach, then his chest, and finally, gently, his lips.

Hal wrapped one arm around Bruce’s neck and slipped his tongue into Bruce’s mouth, his other hand fumbling for some catch in the armor that would let him return the favor. Bruce grabbed his wrist and moved his hand away at the same time that he kissed him fiercely.

“Please?” Hal asked. “I already owe you one.”

“Maybe next time,” Bruce chuckled. His voice was hoarser than normal, deep and throaty, and Hal shivered. It occurred to him that Bruce had swallowed, and his balls tightened at the thought. He zipped up his pants before he could betray himself and rematerialized his uniform.


	9. Chapter 9

Hal wobbled and tried to clear his head. The din of the fight was muted now, like he was hearing it from far away, and he couldn’t focus. Bruce was a dark blur grappling with a bright smear that he thought might have been Cheetah, and a coiling red and electric blue streak might have been Clark and Livewire locked in combat. That couldn’t be right, though. Livewire had been... somewhere else. Hal tried to concentrate, tried to remember what had happened, but everything was lost in a fog. Diana was yelling at someone, and he dimly thought that it might have been him. The forcefield he’d thrown up was flickering and breaking apart, and he couldn’t muster the will to keep it up. There was a sharp thud, followed by an ominous cracking sound, and then a chunk of concrete broke off the damaged column next to him and began its slow descent toward him. Hal blinked stupidly at it. He should do something. He knew he should do something. Trying to figure out what, though, was like wading uphill through waist-deep molasses.

“Get that damn shield back up, Lantern!”

Bruce’s voice lanced through the haze. Hal could do that, couldn’t he? He threw everything he had behind doing as Bruce had said, and the green light brightened and grew almost opaque just as the rough ball of debris hit. The membrane stretched and deformed, and Hal tried to step back and get his footing as he pushed against the weight. He tripped over something soft--Arrow? What was Arrow doing on the ground?--and slipped, scrabbling at the wall to prop himself up. The green bubble broke, and he barely managed to get his arm up in time to shield his head. The concrete landed square on his forearm, and fire sliced down his chest, and he crumpled beneath it.

Hal thought he might have screamed, but then again he couldn’t draw a breath to do it. And it didn’t sound like pain, which was strange. It might have been someone else, he realized, as it sounded again.

The red and blue blurs decoupled, with the blue streak landing solidly in the center of a dark mass. The scream cut off suddenly, and the resulting shower of sparks from Livewire hitting Grodd made Hal squeeze his eyes shut. The confusion was gone as quickly as it had come, and all at once the pain hit him full force. His arm was broken, he was sure. There was blood soaking into his uniform from where a piece of rebar had torn into his chest. Ollie was half-under him, and Hal couldn’t tell how badly the archer was injured.

Diana tackled Cheetah, and Hal was suddenly face to face with Bruce. He pressed his hand to Hal’s arm, then his chest.

“Constructs, now,” Bruce grunted. Hal obediently conjured up a cast and a wrap, gritting his teeth against the pain. Bruce checked Oliver over, then seemed to relax slightly. “He’s fine, physically. Flash!”

Wally appeared next to them, and Hal squinted against the wind stirred by his movement.

“Get Lantern to a hospital,” Bruce said sharply. Wally hesitated, his eyes going to Oliver, and then he grimaced and nodded.

Hal found himself swept into Wally’s arms and moving too quick to make out where they were headed. His vision was going gray around the edges, and everything was throbbing.

“What the hell was that, man?” Hal managed.

“Grodd,” Wally ground out. “He’s a telepath. You didn’t read the brief I sent out last week, did you?”

“You mean the series of stick-figure drawings detailing an attempted coup in a place called Gorilla City?” Hal asked. He gasped when a shift in Wally’s posture put pressure on his arm. He blanched and gritted his teeth, every ounce of concentration he could muster going into maintaining the constructs.

“Sorry,” Wally said, wincing. “Jesus, Hal, come on, stay with me.”

“You didn’t mention he could do the mind-control trick without the helmet,” Hal hissed around the pain. “The helmet you smashed with a rock and kicked off a cliff.”

“I didn’t _know_ ,” Wally said tightly. “Okay, we’re almost there. You should probably, um, stop being Green Lantern in a few seconds? You know, when I tell you?”

Hal thought of letting go of the cast and the wrap and took a deep breath. “This is going to suck balls, dude.”

“Yeah, I know. Believe me, I know.” Wally shook his head. “And believe me, I’m sorry. Um, now. Switch now.”

Hal dropped the uniform and the constructs as Wally skidded to a halt in front of an emergency room.

“This civilian was injured in a supervillain attack,” Wally told the nurse on duty.

Hal choked back a cry when he was lowered onto a gurney. The wound on his chest opened back up, the blood flowing more slowly now that it had had a chance to clot. Hal had to assume that was a good sign, but the way his arm shifted when he moved almost guaranteed a break. Wally squeezed his uninjured arm and darted off, presumably back to the fight. Hal felt for his phone and shot Carol a text to let her know what was going on. He didn’t need her panicking because of a careless news report or doctor, and she was his emergency contact after all.

The next hour was a blur of doctors, exams, stitches, and x-rays. The laceration on his chest was mercifully superficial. It was painful and ugly, but, as the doctor cheerfully informed him while she worked, cleaning and closing it was really quite simple. He was, however, expected to develop a hell of a lot of bruising from the incident over the next twelve hours. His ulna, he was eventually told, was broken. As breaks went, it wasn’t as bad might have been expected. He’d need a cast but no surgery, and the healing time would be quick.

Hal wasn’t sure when they’d started the painkillers--or maybe it was just sedatives--but he found himself nodding along and agreeing through much the same haze he’d felt earlier. He drifted into and out of light naps until it was suddenly night, and his bloody clothes had been changed out for a hospital gown. A dark shape loomed in the corner of his room, near the window.

“Hey,” Hal croaked, waving at him. The monitor clips and wires attached to his arm jangled. “Stop lurking and come here, would you?”

Bruce detached himself from the shadows and moved closer, and Hal watched Bruce’s lips thin as he examined him.

“Arrow?” Hal asked. His voice sounded like he’d been gargling rocks. 

“Fine.” Bruce propped his head up and held a cup of water to his lips, and Hal drank gratefully. “Fortunately, his skull absorbed most of the impact.”

Hal chuckled painfully.

“Did I really get beat up by a monkey?” he breathed, grimacing. Bruce lowered him gently back onto the pillows, and Hal was caught by surprise when he recognized a pang of disappointment.

“Yes, though I doubt anyone else would have put it like that.” Bruce smoothed the sheets back down carefully.

“Because I’m awesome?” Hal asked. Bruce ignored the question.

“If it’s any comfort, you weren’t the only one,” Bruce sighed. “They were ready for us, and we weren’t ready for them.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Hal said airily. “Was it?”

“They didn’t achieve their objective, and you were our only serious casualty,” Bruce told him. “It could have been worse. But it wasn’t good.”

Hal closed his eyes and tried to breathe easy around the stitches on his chest. Everything felt slightly unreal, and he wanted Bruce to touch him again.

“Give it to me straight, doc,” he sighed. “Am I ever gonna play the violin again?”

“Let’s hope not,” Bruce said. “You’re terrible at it.”

“It’s not nice to step on somebody’s line when they’re injured in the line of duty,” Hal pouted. “For real, though. What am I looking at?”

“Six weeks to a full recovery, assuming no complications,” Bruce said flatly. “They don’t expect complications. You’re healthy, young, and physically fit. Given your powerset, you’ll be back on active duty as soon as the doctors clear you, and you can probably resume light duty within a few weeks.”

“I guess that’s not too bad,” Hal murmured. Six weeks. He’d have to alert Oa. Sinestro and Tomar-Re could pick up most of his off-planet duties between them, he was pretty sure. His eyes flicked back to what he could see of Bruce’s face, and he started laughing. “You thought I was going to argue, didn’t you?”

“You usually do,” Bruce pointed out.

“Only when you’re being unreasonable,” Hal said. “Which is most of the time.” He gave Bruce a sloppy grin and raised his eyebrows. “So, they gave me a private room.”

“Yes, they did,” Bruce answered. “They almost gave you an armed guard, but Superman dropping everyone off at the nearest police station capable of handling metas convinced them that you weren’t in any danger as a witness.”

“Yeah, but that has nothing to do with my incredibly smooth way of asking for some head,” Hal replied.

“Mmm. You realize that you’re doped to the gills on painkillers, right?” Bruce asked, checking the morphine pump.

“Mm-hmm.” Hal smiled at him. “I’ve been informed by incredibly unreliable parties that that just makes it way better.”

“And that you’re on a heart-monitor, and that it would be unspeakably awkward for everyone involved if the nurses burst in with a crash-cart just as you were about to get off only to find you receiving a blowjob from a member of the Justice League?” Bruce continued.

“I... actually do not have an argument for that one,” Hal admitted. “That does sound really awkward.”

“Why don’t we just agree on a raincheck?” Bruce suggested.

“But I’m horny now,” Hal complained, yawning.

“You’re falling asleep,” Bruce said gently.

Hal closed his eyes and felt gauntleted fingertips brush over his forehead, barely touching him as they guided his hair out of his eyes.

“I love you,” Hal chuckled. His voice was too loud in the quiet room, and he sounded drunk even to himself.

“Of course you do,” Bruce agreed.

“And a blowjob would be really nice.”

“Go to sleep, Hal.”

Hal drifted off to the feeling of a gloved hand squeezing his.

* * *

The next time Hal woke up, it was morning and Wally was there. He was in street clothes and reading a book, and even without asking, Hal was sure the messenger bag slung over the back of his chair was full of both Hal’s things and contraband.

“Morning,” Hal groaned.

“It lives,” Wally said, smirking. “And it’s just after noon. You lucid?”

“More or less,” Hal said. He still felt fuzzy, and he was sure he wasn’t in nearly as much pain as he should be. But he was positive he could carry on a conversation without having to ask for more than half of it to be repeated. “I think.”

“Man, you were out of it last night,” Wally said, chuckling.

“Oh, yeah?” Hal sighed. His eyes hurt, and his arm hurt, and his chest hurt, and he really wanted the juice box sitting next to Wally’s elbow, but he was reasonably sure it would be a bad idea to use the ring in the middle of a hospital while he was out of uniform and stoned on painkillers. When he opened his eyes again, Wally had pushed the straw into the box and was holding it out for him.

“Thank you,” Hal managed around draining half the box.

“I brought more, if you want,” Wally said. “Last time I wound up in the hospital, I could have killed a whole water cooler all by myself.”

“I didn’t do anything too bad, did I?” Hal asked. He remembered Bruce being in the room, telling him that they’d won. That he’d been the only casualty, that he was going to be fine, that he should only be sidelined for six weeks. That it was safe to rest. He thought he’d fallen asleep afterwards, but apparently not. “I didn’t call Diana ‘mom’ or anything, right?”

Wally snickered. “No, nothing like that. You just told B you loved him.”

Hal stared at Wally, his muddled brain refusing to register what Wally had said. Wally’s grin spread until it was almost splitting his face.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaand that you wanted a blowjob.”

“I didn’t,” Hal finally said, swallowing hard around a sudden, inexplicable lump in his throat. What the everloving hell had he been thinking? Bruce barely tolerated people touching him. Bruce barely acknowledged having friends, needs, or human emotions. A little bit of morphine and a few weeks of Bruce maybe featuring a little more prominently than he ought to in Hal’s fantasies, and Hal couldn’t even remember exactly why he’d decided to send the whole thing up in flames.

“You so did,” Wally laughed. He caught Hal’s look and sobered a little. “Oh, calm down. Even if you hadn’t been tripping balls, I’m pretty sure it’s against his code to strangle the defenseless.”

“What did he say?” Hal asked weakly.

“He told you to go to sleep and then vanished out the window.” Wally leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. 

“I cannot believe I said that.” Or, more specifically, he couldn’t believe he’d said that in front of Wally. Bruce was going to kill him. Or dump him. Or wait until Hal did something aggravating and then punish him by insisting they talk about Hal’s feelings. Hal glared at Wally. “You couldn’t have put that superspeed to good use and like, duct-taped my mouth shut before I finished saying it?”

“Dude, if you’d said it right in front of me, I’d still be rolling on the floor laughing,” Wally said. “I was on my way in. When I heard the ‘I love you’ start up, I assumed you didn’t want to be interrupted. Though believe me, if I’d realized who you were going all true confessions of bromance on, I’d have done my best to save you. I didn’t know until I heard him talk, so you can’t blame me.” Wally held up another pair of juice boxes. “Apple-cranberry or hawaiian punch?”

“Both.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Wally said, grinning. He handed Hal the hawaiian punch first. “If you act like you don’t remember, he’ll probably pretend it never happened. I mean, can you imagine him glaring at you and getting all ‘Did you mean to ask me to fellate you, or were you hallucinating?’ during the next meeting? Because while that’s kind of hilarious, I don’t see him really doing it.”

Hal contemplated telling Wally that he and Bruce were... what? Dating? Sleeping together? Fucking around? Trying to dredge the appropriate terminology for ‘screwing, but I don’t even know what he looks like’ out of his opiate-fogged brain was a lost cause, and he gave up. It was probably a moot point, since he’d already practically guaranteed they’d never get any farther.

A light knock on the door saved him, and Oliver slouched into the room with a black eye and a sly smile. His face fell a little when he saw the juice boxes, and he grumbled something Hal didn’t catch and dumped a half-dozen juice pouches onto one of the trays.

“Is there a memo I missed somewhere about what everybody wants when they wake up in the hospital?” Hal asked.

“Morphine gives you a wicked case of cottonmouth,” Oliver said with a shrug.

“And you can’t enjoy the jello with a wicked case of cottonmouth,” Wally added.

“Okay, next meeting?” Hal sighed. “We are going to have a serious talk about not getting hit if we can help it.”

Hal’s eyes traced Oliver’s face, noting the bruising around his eye and the fatigue written across his features. Oliver rolled his eyes and flushed when he noticed the way Hal’s gaze lingered.

“Yeah, well, first item on the agenda is going to be ‘Try not to jam your elbow into my eye socket while I’m down for the count.’ Second item is ‘Make sure the ape’s been disarmed instead of just mildly inconvenienced.’ Third item is…” Ollie produced a paper bag and shook it. “Your bills are hereby taken care of, but if B asks, this is totally not how I did it.”

Hal cleared his throat and decided which question to start with. Wally dutifully passed him the apple-cranberry, and Hal tried to sit up straighter without pulling on any of his stitches or putting any weight on his broken arm.

“I did that?” he asked with a wince. Oliver’s eye wasn’t badly swollen, but the bruise was already dark and ugly, and it looked painful.

“Well, not intentionally. I think you were distracted by keeping us both from being crushed to death by collapsing architecture, so it’s not like I can hold it against you,” Oliver said.

“I’m sorry?” Hal offered.

“Apology accepted. It’ll make for a good ice-breaker at the party, anyway, so don’t sweat it. While we’re at it, I’m sorry for tripping you with my semi-conscious body,” Ollie said cheerfully.

“Yeah, that was pretty uncool,” Wally snorted. 

“You have zero room to talk,” Oliver snapped. “I mean, I make eye-contact with a monkey and suddenly I’m temporarily lobotomized. I thought you’d taken care of that guy a month ago. I’d have turned up with a mirror or something if I’d known it was a risk.”

“I thought I had! And that’s not how it works,” Wally said defensively. “He’s a telepath, not a medusa.”

Wally dumped the contents of the messenger bag out into his lap and sorted a change of clothes and some personal effects into a neat pile.

“Okay, now what’s this about my bills being taken care of?” Hal demanded.

“Oh, yeah. B came up with some weird account structuring thing to generate a paper trail, but turns out I’m really more of a cash in a paper bag dead-drop kind of guy,” Oliver said with a shrug. “So. Ta-da! I’d make it rain, but I really don’t want you to get mugged on your way out of the hospital.”

Hal couldn’t believe Bruce would do something like this. Except that wasn’t exactly true. He could completely see Bruce running the numbers, coming up with a plan, and executing it without thinking to talk to the person whose life he was meddling with. It had probably never occurred to him that anyone might see things differently than he did, because in his mind, he was never wrong. Well, Hal could take care of himself, and if he needed help he could damn well open his mouth and ask for it. 

Or at least, he thought, he could take care of himself with a little help from Carol. Carol, for whom he actually worked, with whom he had a close personal relationship, and on whose behalf he’d made sacrifices in the past that made him feel marginally less like he was mooching when he let her pay him for forty hours even if he’d only made it in for thirty. Oliver wasn’t a piggy bank, and just because they’d gotten up close and incredibly personal a few times didn’t mean Hal needed Bruce butting into his affairs like this. He resisted the urge to ask Oliver if Bruce had talked to him before or after the inadvertent declaration of love.

“Why are my bills covered, exactly?” Hal asked. 

“Um. Workman’s comp?” Oliver ventured. He and Wally traded glances. Oliver looked befuddled, and Wally looked like he was going to start laughing again. “Honestly, I kind of tune B out most of the time, especially when he starts talking money. That guy could put my hedge fund manager to sleep. Am I missing something?”

“Hal doesn’t want to be a kept man,” Wally chuckled.

Hal flushed hot, and Oliver somehow looked even more confused.

“We’re not…” Oliver managed. “I mean, it’s not like that. We’re just friends.”

“Not you, dumbass,” Wally hooted.

“Yeah, I’m lost,” Oliver sighed. He looked at Hal. “Do I need to get him up for a CAT scan? Did he run face-first into a wall again while I was out?”

“Hal accidentally hit on B while he was out of his gourd,” Wally explained.

“Oh, Jesus,” Oliver yelped, his eyes going wide. “Well done on not having been drained of blood and turned into a minion.” He turned to Wally. “How bad?”

“Pretty bad,” Wally chuckled smugly.

“Whatever,” Hal snapped. He could feel his face going beet red. “I don’t want your money.”

“Too bad, ‘cuz I’m not taking it back.” Oliver tossed the bag onto the bed and held up his hands. “Just because you managed to get on B’s bad side doesn’t mean I’m going to join you there in solidarity. You need a ride home, or has the Road Runner here got your covered?”

“Don’t look at me,” Wally said quickly. “I took the train.”

“Yeah, let’s not do the public transportation route until you can successfully navigate stairs without doing a faceplant,” Oliver sighed. “I think one of the doctors said something about you getting discharged in a few hours if you’re feeling up to it. I’ll get a town car. In the meantime, do you want to get some more sleep, or are you up to more of our charming company?”

What Hal really wanted was to call Bruce and yell at him for a while, but the pain and lack of real sleep were starting to catch up to him again. He frowned and reached for one of the pouches Oliver had brought him.

“I’m going to catch a quick nap,” he said grudgingly, eyeing the paper bag as if it was a snake.

“Okay, man. I’ll stay here and make sure you don’t accidentally invite in any more vampires,” Oliver said. He glanced at Wally. “You heading out or hanging out?”

“I’ve already missed a few hours of work,” Wally told them. “I’d love to stay, but if you’ve got it covered, I should get back.” He glanced from Hal to the pile of clothes. “Did you need anything else from home?”

“No, man. Looks good,” Hal said. 

He couldn’t see everything from where he was sitting, but like hell he was sending Wally back to his apartment for a pair of socks or a toothbrush. Wally repacked everything in a heartbeat and hung it carefully over the back of Oliver’s chair.

“Thanks,” Hal told him. If it hadn’t been for them, he’d have needed to call Carol or Tom for a pick-up, and he hated pulling them out of work just to mop up the after-effects of his superheroing.

“What are friends for?” Wally tapped his fist against Hal’s and waved on his way out the door. Oliver waved back and leaned back in his chair with a grunt. He straightened uncomfortably, and Hal wondered if he’d come out of the fight with a little more than wounded pride and a black eye.

“If it’s any comfort, it’s like a rule that nothing you say when you’re out of it on painkillers can be held against you,” Oliver assured him. “My greatest hits so far have been challenging a priest to a duel after a car accident and asking my girlfriend of a month to marry me after she shoved me down a flight of stairs.”

“You had a girlfriend push you down the stairs?” Hal asked. Suddenly Bruce leaning on Oliver to make sure his expenses were covered didn’t seem so bad in comparison. “Dude.”

“It turned out she was less strictly-speaking my girlfriend and more secretly an assassin hired by a business rival.” Oliver shrugged. “The joke was kind of on that dude, because I don’t really run my company much, and now he’s doing ten-to-twenty even after dropping a fortune on lawyers. Though I could have skipped the part with the broken leg and the hired killer who fell for me but was still willing to go through with the contract, because both of those put a serious crimp in my style for a year or two.” He stretched one leg and rolled his eyes. “Oh, don’t sit there looking at me like you’ve never had a girlfriend slash your tires or something.”

“I don’t even know how to respond to that question,” Hal said. “Aside from saying that tire-slashing and attempted murder are not even in the same section of the Bad Breakup Handbook. Seeming like you’re the sort of person who would try to kill your boyfriend is kind of a turn-off for me.”

“Whatever. Let me know when you’ve decided to join the priesthood and make that vow of celibacy official,” Oliver scoffed.

“As soon as I’m out of here, I’m taking up a collection to get you a better therapist for your birthday,” Hal told him.

“Says the guy who made a pass at the living dead.” Hal glared at him, and Oliver laughed. “At least you weren’t coming out of anesthesia and telling your sister at length that you only loved her like a sister.”

Hal tilted his head. “Okay, yeah. That’s worse.”

“So much worse,” Oliver agreed. “Especially since it had somehow previously escaped everyone’s notice, including mine, that my girlfriend at the time really kind of looked like my sister. And after that it was just so incredibly awkward. I mean, the attraction had kind of fizzled, but she was wicked smart and funny as hell and we got along really well and my whole family loved her, so it wasn’t too surprising that it took a consultation with Dr. Feelgood for me to really break it off. If I had just lucked out and told _her_ that instead of, you know, my sister…”

“Maybe you could try staying out of the hospital?” Hal suggested.

“That time was appendicitis, of all things,” Oliver said defensively. “Who gets appendicitis in college? Aside from me, I mean. And the assassination attempt was genuinely not my fault, apart from having suggested that the company try to go a little bit more green in the future, which I refuse to feel bad about. Come to think of it, the car crash wasn’t all the way my fault, either. I mean, yes, if I hadn’t been black-out drunk, I wouldn’t have let my also-drunk friend shove me in the back seat and then climb behind the wheel because he didn’t want to leave a sports car in the parking lot of a club, but I wasn’t the one driving.” 

“A better therapist and a minder,” Hal muttered. “Jesus, man. I fly jets nobody’s sure will work for a living, and I’m appalled by your risk-taking.”

“You really do need that nap, don’t you?” Oliver laughed.

“This is not me being cranky. Why does everyone think they can win an argument just by dangling the prospect of sleep in front of me?”

“Because you work bare minimum fourteen hours a day and still try to fit in a fair amount of recreational activities,” Oliver said.

“Well, this, right now, is not me being cranky. This is me having a perfectly reasonable concern for your wellbeing.” Hal glowered at him. “Jackass.”

Oliver smiled at him and shook his head. “It’s not my fault the one time B decides to actually visit someone in the hospital, it’s you and you’re trying to score.”

Hal resisted the urge to bury his head in the pillows.


	10. Chapter 10

Hal propped his feet up on the console and arranged his sling so that he wasn’t resting anything too firmly on his chest. Bruce gave him a pointed look that he could feel from behind the lenses, and Hal stretched and yawned in an equally pointed display of making himself comfortable. The hard cold knot in his stomach had undercut his enjoyment of Shayera fussing over him, which had only compounded his irritation with Bruce. 

He’d fallen asleep in the town car halfway home, and he hadn’t noticed Oliver sneaking the cash back into his overnight bag. Hal had about had a heart attack when he’d counted it the next morning. He’d spent the next two days in no shape to drive, in no shape to attract attention by suiting up, and unsure who he was more infuriated with: the slick billionaire who refused to take his calls and knew he couldn’t show up in person to make him take the money back, or the taciturn asshole whose number he still didn’t have and probably never would. Neither of them likely had any idea Hal was even angry with them. Hal hadn’t felt like a charity case in a long time, but damned if realizing he had a year’s worth of rent and utilities staring him in the face courtesy of the pair of them thinking he _needed_ it hadn’t brought the uncomfortable feeling roaring back.

“So, I was wondering,” Hal began.

Bruce’s grunt had the slight upward inflection that indicated a question, and Hal wondered what had gone wrong with his life that he could recognize that.

“Exactly where do you get off badgering Arrow into shelling out for my bills?” Hal asked tightly.

Bruce turned at that, rotating to face him completely. He was frowning, and his head was cocked like Hal was a puzzle he was trying to solve, and for the first time it occurred to Hal that Oliver might have just been trying to deflect the blame for picking up the tab. Swooping in and rearranging everyone’s affairs as he saw fit was completely in character for Bruce, yes, but swooping in to play Santa and forestalling arguments by saying it was on the orders of someone no one but Hal would argue with was completely in character for Oliver. Hal suddenly wondered how many things Oliver had gotten away with by nonchalantly chalking it up to Bruce, and he wished he’d led with the ‘I didn’t mean to say I love you’ speech.

“What makes you think this is about you?” Bruce asked.

Well, Hal thought, that settled that, then.

“Excuse me?” he said sharply.

“Let me rephrase that,” Bruce murmured. “Why are you asking?”

Hal considered Oliver’s request to not tell Bruce it was a bag of money. “Because Arrow informed me over lime jello that I didn’t need to worry about any of my bills, and when I asked what the hell he thought he was doing, he told me to take it up with you.”

“Ah.”

“So, again, where the hell do you get off hitting Arrow up for money on my account?” Hal demanded. “Because I do all right, B. I’ve got health insurance. I’ve got some savings. I’m covered. And if I’m not? I’m a grown man. I am capable of opening my damn mouth and asking for help. So the next time you feel like playing white knight, do us both a favor and fucking don’t.”

“Are you finished?” Bruce asked calmly.

“Yeah, I’m finished,” Hal growled.

“That’s all you’re angry over?”

“Is that not enough?” Hal asked. “Because I’m pretty sure I could come up with enough to go the rest of our shift if you feel some deep emotional need to get yelled at.”

“I simply want to make sure I’m addressing all points at issue,” Bruce said.

“Oh my god,” Hal snapped, dropping his feet and spinning in his chair. “This isn’t a debate. This is me _telling_ you. That was out of bounds, and if you do it again, we’re going to have a problem.”

“Yes, so I gathered,” Bruce said, annoyance finally creeping into his voice. “Consequently, I imagine it will be some comfort to hear that it had nothing to do with you.”

“The huge pile of--” Hal barely caught himself. “--copays Arrow just picked up without so much as a by your leave had nothing to do with me.”

“Not you personally, no,” Bruce told him with a sigh. “And he just handed you a stack of hundreds, didn’t he?”

“I’m still waiting for the explanation that this wasn’t about me,” Hal said. He didn’t need Bruce dodging the topic by taking issue with how Ollie had handled something that didn’t need handling in the first place.

“I proposed it six months ago. Captain Marvel was the catalyst, though hardly the only potential beneficiary,” Bruce said firmly. “Apparently, he’s part-time and not making much. Answering calls because the League needs him has the potential to mean he can’t keep the lights on that month. Barda gets benefits through her job, but Mister Miracle is freelance. If he’s injured helping us, their medical is covered but they’d have a hard time covering daily expenses. J’onn’s working under the table, and while he could give up on his attempts at an independent life if an extended mission comes up, he shouldn’t have to. And of course, this is before potential dependents are factored in. Do I need to continue?”

“So, do you do background checks on everybody, or just the people you like?” Hal asked. He wasn’t ready to let go of being angry, and the sudden information that he hadn’t been Bruce’s motivation only made the feeling worse. Being angry was more comfortable than feeling like he’d fucked up in some nebulous way that he couldn’t even fully articulate yet.

“I listen when people tell me things,” Bruce said. “A skill you could benefit from, if you’re taking suggestions.”

Hal barely checked the urge to suggest that Bruce could blow him, and wouldn’t _that_ have just been perfect? He could feel a flush creeping over his cheeks. Bruce turned back to the monitor and pulled up a view of Madagascar, and Hal was simultaneously glad not to be the center of his attention anymore and pissed that Bruce couldn’t even act like he was worth paying attention to while completely demolishing him.

“Due to the likelihood that such expenses would be unpredictable and uncommon, I suggested an investment structure that would earn enough interest to cover whatever personnel costs arose,” Bruce continued. “The only financial drain would be the inaccessibility of the principal, though of course it would remain under his control and both fully retrievable and available as collateral in the event of an emergency. It was shielded enough that it could provide payments under the guise of supplementary insurance in case anyone gets audited without linking League members or auxiliaries back to Arrow’s identity.” Bruce frowned at a spot on the grid. “I can only assume based on your reaction that Arrow used the proposal to clean up a coffee spill and opted to simply eat the cost if anything came up.”

“I’m not apologizing for being upset,” Hal said mulishly.

“I’m not asking you to.”

“And this doesn’t change any of my points about being able to take care of myself.”

“I never assumed you were anything other than a rock of financial solvency,” Bruce assured him.

Hal rolled his eyes and wondered how Bruce always managed to get so far under his skin. “Can you please not patronize me, here?”

Bruce’s lips settled into a flat line. “You make a reasonable wage and have an independent and loyal support network outside the League. Your power doesn’t result in any unusual expenses or losses that you need to defray out of that wage. You’re not carrying any significant debt, covering any dependents, or nursing any particularly expensive or debilitating vices. I have full faith in your ability to provide for yourself outside of truly catastrophic circumstances.”

“Did you seriously pull a credit report on me?” Hal asked, his floundering irritation finding a point to ground on.

“My willingness to soothe your ego does have limits, Lantern,” Bruce said, his tone going cold

“You gonna call in that forest fire, or should I?” Hal asked, scowling.

“It’s a natural burn, and the local responders appear to have taken the appropriate measures to keep it from affecting homes and crops.” 

Bruce made no move to bring up the comms, and Hal picked at his cast.

“So Superman doesn’t need to know?” he prompted.

“He’s in the middle of a date. Aquaman, who will also not be called away unless it becomes actually necessary, is closer and more appropriate,” Bruce said.

Hal shot him a sharp look. Leave it to Bruce to get his back up more when his judgment in the field was questioned than when his handling of a personal matter was challenged. Or maybe he just had a set level of shit he’d put up with from Hal, and Hal had blown through it in half an hour. 

He ran his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. If he’d wanted a reaction, it looked like he was going to get it. If he’d planned this a little better, maybe spent a little less time stewing over it while housebound before deciding that he was perfectly fit to earn his keep sitting in a chair and watching a satellite feed, he’d be looking like less of a jackass now. He should have started with the apology, gotten that out of the way before he climbed on his high horse about the money. Now it would look like he was trying to salvage his dignity instead of genuinely meaning it.

“So, it was brought to my attention that I might have also said a few grossly inappropriate things when I was fresh out of getting stitched back together,” Hal said carefully.

That got Bruce’s attention back on him. “What?”

“Flash overheard us. Or rather, he overheard me. You know, asking you for a blowjob. Telling you I loved you. God only knows what else.” Hal tapped his fingers against the armrest and sighed. “Since I’m not apologizing for anything I said earlier, now seems like a good time to apologize for that.”

Bruce shook his head. “I should be the one apologizing. If I’d been paying attention--”

“Yeah, no. Don’t bogart my mea culpa,” Hal said, holding up his hand. “Maybe just sit back and enjoy it, since I’m not saying I’m sorry for anything else.”

“Your judgment was impaired,” Bruce said, frowning. “If I’d realized we weren’t alone, I wouldn’t have let you keep talking.”

“You are being surprisingly chill about this for someone whose response to having friends is to try to get Superman to take over because it’s more efficient,” Hal pointed out. “And as far as embarrassing things I’ve done around Flash, that doesn’t even hit the top ten. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I’m not going all stalker on you. Yeah, I probably wanted that blowjob, but…”

“You’re not making any grand emotional declarations while sober,” Bruce finished. “I understand.”

“The classy thing would be to not make it weird,” Hal muttered. He wasn’t sure exactly how Bruce managed to make precise, unemotional statements sound sarcastic, but of all the times Hal wished he wouldn’t, now was the sharpest.

“Narcotics aren’t like alcohol, Lantern. This wasn’t a case of lowered inhibitions. And seeing as you weren’t using recreationally, you don’t need to apologize.”

Hal glanced at him and then went back to assessing the forest fire. “Are we good, then?”

“I’m not sure how you mean that,” Bruce said after a moment.

“It’s not quantum physics or Kantian ethics,” Hal sighed. He grimaced when he bumped his cast against his chest. Bruce gave him a close look and then visibly decided not to say anything, for which Hal was grateful.

Bruce pulled up the comms. “Aquaman, this is the monitor room.”

“Receiving.” Orin’s voice sounded thin and flat over the speakers.

“Forest fire in Madagascar. Local responders have requested assistance. We’re transmitting coordinates now.”

Bruce typed quickly and confidently, paused to double-check the information, and then hit send. Hal refrained from pointing out that Orin would be halfway there already if Bruce had contacted him when the situation had first cropped up.

“Be advised, the political situation is currently delicate,” Bruce said. “Minimize engagement with local authorities if possible.”

“Understood.”

“You know he’s just going to hit them with a trident if they get in his way, right?” Hal asked.

Bruce stared at him, then sighed as the speaker crackled back into life.

“You know I can hear you, right, Lantern?” Orin asked coldly.

“We have all possible confidence that you won’t hit anyone with a trident if it’s at all avoidable,” Bruce said. “Monitor room out.”

Bruce ended the call and sat back, steepling his fingers. Hal rubbed his eyes and wondered if he was even capable of opening his mouth without immediately jamming his foot in it anymore.

“You’re going to need to fix that sooner rather than later,” Bruce told him.

“Yeah.”

“It would be best if you could do it without bringing up the fact that you’re right,” Bruce added.

“Yup.” Hal rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll get on it as soon as he’s done there.”

Bruce tilted his head and considered the problem. “Give it a few hours. He usually needs to get a little distance before he’s willing to forgive a slight like that.”

“If you say so,” Hal muttered. “I’m not really sure how to break down a question like ‘are we good,’ B.”

“You’re the one who was angry,” Bruce reminded him. “If you’ve calmed down, then I suppose that, yes, we’re good.”

Hal took a deep breath. There wasn’t a good way to ask if that meant it was water under the bridge, one more jerkoff moment added to the impressive list Bruce had already witnessed and not been put off by, or if it meant that Bruce was letting it go and considering himself well done with Hal. There wasn’t even a good way to ask himself when it had started to matter so much. They didn’t get along. They disagreed about practically everything. Bruce was a buzzkill on a good day and a paranoid, self-righteous son of a bitch on a bad one. He was stacked and capable of making Hal forget his own name for a few seconds, sure, but that had never been enough to tip the scales like this before.

“If you’re just going to sit there scowling at Sri Lanka like it’s done something to personally offend you, why don’t you go test the uplink protocols J’onn established earlier today?” Bruce asked mildly.

Hal grimaced and took the hint.

* * *

“There is absolutely no chance I’m going to be able to talk you into a bed, is there?” Hal grunted.

Bruce sucked at his neck a little harder. “The only bed readily available is in there, and everyone was specifically asked to refrain from fucking on it.”

Hal had hoped this was what Bruce had had in mind when he’d invited Hal onto the plane. Invited was almost a strong word; a tilt of the chin, a shift in posture, a slight jerk of the shoulder, and Hal had gotten the message. There had been a small, lingering suspicion that Bruce had just wanted to break things off in private, though, and it hadn’t vanished until Bruce had started kissing him. Of course, once that was off the table, Hal had immediately started missing everything else that was off the table, too.

“You’re basically a ninja,” Hal told him. “No one would know we’d even been in there.”

“It would still be rude.”

Bruce’s arm tightened around his waist, and Hal braced his good arm against the bulkhead and ground back against him. It had been difficult to even get it up, alone in his apartment with just his aching body and his bruised pride for company. Here and now, with Bruce holding him and ready to go, he was tired and sore and hard enough that it almost hurt. Hal swore when his knees buckled, and Bruce caught him easily and maneuvered him onto a seat.

“Do you need to rest first?” Bruce asked softly, and Hal’s jaw clenched. He’d been a tangled ball of want and self-consciousness when he’d started this, and the last thing he needed was Bruce making it worse now.

“What I need is your hand on my cock,” Hal snapped, “before I lose my damn mind.”

Bruce chuckled and sat down next to him, and Hal found himself being hoisted into Bruce’s lap. Hal bit back an objection to being manhandled. Being with someone big enough to do it was normally a turn-on, and it wasn’t an itch he often got to scratch. It was just that right now, with Bruce, he didn’t need any particular reminders that he’d fucked up the last time he’d had to hold his own in a fight.

“Lose the uniform instead,” Bruce suggested, his voice a quiet purr in Hal’s ear.

Hal let it go grudgingly, his impulse to dig in his heels undermined sharply by his aching cock. He gasped when Bruce’s hand wrapped around his shaft, his sweatpants barely needing to be pushed out of the way first. Bruce’s other arm was back around his waist, and his fingertips were trailing over Hal’s skin under his shirt, and Hal didn’t bother trying not to groan. Bruce mouthed at his neck and ran his thumb slowly over Hal’s slit, and Hal tried not to aggravate the laceration on his chest as molten pleasure coiled up his spine.

“Faster, dammit,” Hal hissed. Bruce was being too careful by far, and Hal reached back and curled his hand around the back of Bruce’s neck. “Stop being so damn gentle! I’m not going to break.”

“Once the cast is off, I’ll treat you as ungently as you like,” Bruce growled, his teeth digging into Hal’s shoulder. 

The idea made Hal’s nerves tingle and his cock throb, and the slight twist of Bruce’s grip as he slid back down Hal’s shaft made every muscle in his body tighten with the need to climax.

“Until then, patience--”

“Ah!” Hal tried not to buck as he came and only managed to shove himself back harder against Bruce instead. He relaxed slowly, panting, and let himself fold into Bruce’s embrace. Bruce let his face rest against the crook of Hal’s neck, and Hal grinned to himself.

“You were going to say patience is a virtue, weren’t you?” he asked.

“I was,” Bruce said. 

Hal could feel Bruce’s smile against the skin of his shoulder, and he wanted to curl up in Bruce’s lap and fall asleep. The thought jolted him out of his post-orgasmic haze. He couldn’t afford to get clingy so soon after some sedated declaration of love and a full-blown bristle about his independence. Hal straightened his pants, twisted around so that they were face to face again, and kissed Bruce roughly. Bruce leaned against the wall and kept a steadying hand against the small of Hal’s back while Hal explored his mouth. He fumbled at Bruce’s armor only to have Bruce stop him abruptly.

“Don’t,” Bruce warned.

Hal’s shoulders slumped. Of course it would be like this. He should have guessed from the last two times. Bruce’s hand was firm against his back, though, and he hadn’t moved to put any more distance between their mouths.

“Look, if you don’t want me touching you, just tell me,” Hal said quietly. “I can work around it.”

“I don’t want you getting electrocuted,” Bruce told him. 

“I... what?” Hal asked.

“There are a few defenses built into the suit.”

Hal pursed his lips and tried to think of an appropriate response to that one. Bruce didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed about being a humanoid electric eel, and Hal sighed and gave up.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because body armor works best when it’s still attached and not scattered in small pieces all over the field of combat,” Bruce told him, his tone suggesting that it was self-evident. 

Hal put his forehead on Bruce’s shoulder and closed his eyes. “So you electrified it.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t tell if it’s a good idea or completely insane,” Hal admitted. 

“It’s a good idea,” Bruce said. He shifted so that his hands were around Hal’s waist. “You can tell the difference by whether or not it works.”

Hal tried not to laugh, and his stitches ached with the effort. “I was half-expecting you to say it was because you were the one having it.”

“There’s also that,” Bruce agreed.

“You know, there was a point in my life when the weirdest discussion I had to worry about having after sex was on account of getting someone’s name wrong,” Hal sighed.

“Halcyon days,” Bruce said drily.

Hal did laugh then, and he pressed himself easily against Bruce’s chest. Bruce casually making promises about what he’d do once the cast came off implied that he’d been sincere when he’d brushed off Hal’s indiscretion in the hospital. This wasn’t a last time. The emergency lighting made the cabin seem smaller than it was, and Bruce was warm enough that Hal could feel every restless night and interrupted nap since he’d gotten out of the hospital catching up with him. If he didn’t get back on his feet soon, he was going to be snoring into Bruce’s armor in short order, and he was fairly sure he’d never live it down if he wound up drooling on it and getting shocked.

“You should rest before you head back to Coast City,” Bruce murmured, propping him up gently.

“Yeah, probably,” Hal agreed, yawning.

“In a bed,” Bruce clarified.

“You’re really going to make me do the walk of shame back to the guest room?” Hal asked, getting to his feet and stretching as much as he could without pulling anything. He chuckled when he caught Bruce stifling a sympathy-yawn. “I could catch a nap back here. The way you fly this thing, I’d never know we weren’t on the ground.”

“I’m not flying you home,” Bruce snorted. “It’s bad enough that you spend so much time around your workplace in uniform. Which you should probably put back on before you head inside, if you’re that concerned about anyone knowing.”

Hal glanced at his ring and smirked. It would be a hell of a way to announce that he and Bruce were fooling around. Then again, it would also be a hell of a way to get half the League looking at him like he’d sustained a head injury that had slipped past the doctors at the hospital, and he wasn’t sure he was going to have the patience for that conversation until after he’d at least gotten the stitches out. Hal flexed his hand, and the ring pulsed faintly. His suit papered over the ratty sweats he’d only worn because they were easy to pull on one-handed, and the cast took on a faint green tinge as the construct-sling wrapped around it.

“You know,” Hal said, “I still don’t have your number.”

“Is that your subtle way of asking for it?” Bruce asked, the corner of his mouth twitching up in a smile.

He cleaned his hands and pulled the gauntlets back on.

“Well, it would be nice to be able to call you a dick when I think you’ve been a dick instead of having to meditate on how much of a dick you’ve been for a couple days before being able to tell you off,” Hal pointed out. “Unless you particularly enjoy watching me try to walk back an overreaction to you being a dick.”

“You make an unexpectedly compelling case, I’ll give you that.” Bruce produced a slip of paper and a pencil from his utility belt.

Hal bit his lip when Bruce handed it to him. “You have business cards.”

“I do.”

“That are just blank cards with a bat on them.”

“Yes.”

Hal sighed and pushed his hair out of his face. “Arrow or Flash?”

“Superman.”

Hal shook his head. “He did not give you these.”

“He did,” Bruce said firmly. “I believe this sort of thing is considered the height of humor in Metropolis.”

“And you kept them.”

“Yes.”

“You actually _use_ them.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Bruce asked. “They’re useful.”

Hal stared at him, almost but not completely sure that his innocent tone was masking amusement at Hal’s expense. He tried not to imagine Bruce nonchalantly handing the cards out after fights in Gotham, just in case anyone wasn’t sure how to contact him.

“Do you want mine, or do you already have it from cyberstalking me?” Hal asked. 

“Arrow insisted on giving it to everyone after you were released from the hospital,” Bruce said.

Hal frowned. “And literally nobody who didn’t already have it called me?”

“His answer for whether or not he had your permission to do it was that he was sure you wouldn’t mind,” Bruce explained, shaking his head. “It might have put something of a damper on things.” His lips twisted. “If you’re that intent on getting strange texts from aliens at odds hours, you’ll want to hand it out yourself.”

“Do I even want to ask?” 

“You were the one yearning for simple post-coital conversations,” Bruce said. “If you don’t want to wind up refereeing an argument about tequila’s effects on Thanagarians versus its effects on the warriors of Apokolips, I’d suggest--”

“Barda and Shayera have your number,” Hal said flatly. It was possible he’d read too much into Bruce finally being willing to share it.

“Superman saw fit to include them when he sent their texts to me and asked me to deal with it.” Bruce made it sound almost reasonable.

“Okay.” Hal nodded. “Yeah. I think I might be done with being awake for a while.”

“The purpose of the worm came up,” Bruce said, and there was definitely a smile on his lips this time.

“And I’m sure I’m done with being awake for a while,” Hal sighed. “Catch you on the flip side, B.”

Hal tucked the card carefully into his sling and made his way down the ramp.


	11. Chapter 11

Hal glared at the cards in his hand and finally shook his head. “I fold.”

“Mmm.” Tom gave him a long look, then sighed and put down his own cards. “Hal.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hal said quickly. “I’m not very good company right now. I appreciate dinner and the apartment not looking like a tornado hit it. You don’t have to hang around and watch me space out on you, too.”

“Spacing out doesn’t even begin to cover it,” Tom pointed out, his dark eyes soft. “We’re playing Go Fish.”

“Oh. Right.” Hal flushed and rubbed at the cast. “Sorry.”

“You want to talk about it?” Tom asked.

“Not really,” Hal muttered.

“Okay. Carol’s back tomorrow,” Tom said cheerfully. “Go ahead and turn on the game. I’m going to collect my winnings and hit the vending machine.”

He scooped up the change he’d found in Hal’s pockets while he’d been sorting the embarrassingly large pile of laundry and paused at the door.

“You want anything?”

“Nah, man. I burned out on everything they stock within a month of moving in here,” Hal said, shaking his head.

He looked around the apartment and snorted to himself. Tom had tackled the mess Hal had been avoiding with the same sense of resigned good humor that he brought to rebuilding a burned-out shell of an engine. Hal had tried to look at it as an opportunity to practice his constructs’ fine motor skills, but that had only lasted as long as it took him to realize that the laundry and dishes and general filth were all piling up faster than he was getting better at using the ring as an extra hand. It wasn’t even that he wasn’t improving quickly; in any other circumstances, he’d have been quite pleased with his progress. But having to concentrate on every minute detail of pressure, friction, angle, and torque whenever he couldn’t accomplish a task using just his non-dominant hand while he was already tired and restless was wearing him even thinner.

And Carol was as unfortunately indifferent to housekeeping as he was. For her, anything that wasn’t paperwork or blueprints could wait; for him, anything that wasn’t a bill or on fire would keep until he had the time and energy to deal with it. Of the three of them, she was the chef. She’d kept him fed for the first few days, shooing him out of the kitchen whenever he tried to just microwave a tv dinner or order takeout. 

Tom had taken over when a round of new clients had needed Carol to show them around the facilities and convince them that Ferris was still the best in the business. While he’d immediately given in when Hal had suggested takeout, Tom was firmly of the opinion that Hal was going to break his other arm, or possibly his neck, tripping over everything if left to his own devices.

Carol would be back, though, and Carol would notice that he was a million miles away, and Carol would not happily leave it for Tom to deal with.

Hal sighed and scooped the empty food containers into the trash. Tom let himself back in and waved his bottle of root beer triumphantly.

“I could just buy a two-liter,” Hal pointed out. “It would even cost less.”

“We tried that, remember?” Tom asked, laughing. “You buy the store brand, and I don’t drink it fast enough to keep a big bottle from going flat before I finish it, and then you don’t want to throw it out because it’s wasting food.” He ruffled Hal’s hair on the way past the table to the kitchen. “If I’m going to rot my teeth with this stuff, I’m going to enjoy it.”

He pulled a glass out of the drying rack, wiped off a few stray drops of water with his t-shirt, and filled it with ice. Hal watched him fondly, then shook his head. Their worst fights had been about stupid things like throwing out eggs that were past their expiration date or when clothes were past mending and ready for the rag-pile. Hal’s mother had had to scrimp to put food on the table for them after his father had died, and he still had a few habits left over from those years. Half of Tom’s entire town had grown up under the poverty line, and it had made him absolutely ruthless about watching people he cared about trying to eat suspect food or, in the case of one truly spectacular argument, salvage ruined sneakers with duct tape.

“I’m kind-of sort-of seeing someone in the League,” Hal said without preamble.

“And the Green Lantern Appreciation Society getting another member isn’t entirely a good thing?” Tom asked, leaning back against the stove.

Hal managed a short laugh as he shook his head. “It’s kind-of sort-of a trainwreck.” 

Hal got to his feet and grabbed a washcloth. He gave the table a quick wipe-down and tossed it back into the sink. Tom sighed, rinsed it, wrung it out, and hung it over the spigot.

“Define trainwreck.”

“Everything’s a fight,” Hal said. “I called him an asshole in the middle of inviting him to a party.”

Tom took a sip of his root beer. “You could kind-of sort-of break it off.”

“But he’s really hot,” Hal protested.

“Your dick will live,” Tom assured him. “Not to mention that you’re the Green Lantern. There would be equally hot guys lined up around the block if they had your address and thought they could get a date. And I can only assume there would be at least five or six of them that you could put up with.”

“But they don’t know my address, and it’s kind of sleazy to score dates in-costume,” Hal sighed. “And I’m pretty sure I’m already in over my head.”

“Ah.”

“And it’s less the way nothing’s ever easy with him and more the way I’ve been picking a lot of the fights lately.”

“Because you’re feeling vulnerable and need to make sure he respects you?” Tom asked, draining his glass.

“I... that’s not…” Hal ground the heel of his palm into his forehead. Of course it was, all wrapped up with the ugly suspicion that someone like Bruce couldn’t possibly see him as anything but a show-off with no back-up plan who’d lucked into his powers. “God damn it.”

“So it’s basically you and Carol all over again,” Tom said. “Only with superpowers this time.”

“And he can’t fire me,” Hal added. “Why does this keep happening?”

“It’s almost like you have a thing for people you have to work to keep up with.” Tom refilled his glass, crumpled the bottle, and tossed it into the recycling bin. “Sure you don’t want to watch the game instead of talking about it?”

“There’s nothing else to talk about,” Hal said, looking for the remote. “I’m an idiot.”

And he was, wasn’t he? It wasn’t ‘basically’ him and Carol all over again; he was practically following a goddamn script. She’d been the boss’s pretty, know-it-all daughter, and he’d been even cockier then than he was now, and neither one of them would budge an inch around the other. He’d started losing ground once he’d found out that she was fearless, whip-smart, and just as bullheaded as he was, that she ran the business as much as her father did, that she’d learned to fly before she’d learned to drive, and that as far as she was concerned, men like him were a dime a dozen. Once they’d started fooling around, he’d needed to prove that he wasn’t just another easy lay, which had translated into making everything between them difficult. At least this time, Hal thought sourly, he didn’t have to worry about being the one to ruin things by insisting he needed his space. He wasn’t even sure Bruce was aware of the concept of free time, and it was a miracle he’d let Hal get as close as he had. It would eventually occur to Bruce that Hal was more trouble than he was worth, at which point he’d do the eminently logical thing and call it off.

“If not always recognizing your own behavior patterns makes you an idiot, you’re in good company,” Tom snorted. “What are you looking for?”

“Remote,” Hal said, sliding his hand between the couch cushions.

“The one with the dead batteries?” Tom asked.

“Son of a bitch,” Hal mumbled into the cushion. He straightened up. “Yes. The one with the dead batteries. How the hell did I forget that? I meant to get batteries, too.”

“When’s the last time you actually had time to watch something on the tube?” Tom pointed out.

“Yeah, but _you_ remembered,” Hal grumbled.

“I fix engines and do my best to keep you from being buried alive under piles of dirty clothes and junk mail,” Tom said. “You fix active volcanoes and get boulders thrown at your head by super-gorillas and patrol the universe with a magic ring created by immortal aliens. I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to forget things like whether or not your remote works right this second.”

“Maybe,” Hal said reluctantly.

Tom’s eyes swept over the living room, then he snapped his fingers and headed into the kitchen.

“If I left it inside another appliance, do me a favor and tell me it’s just lost for good,” Hal called after him.

“I put it in the drawer with all the batteries that don’t fit it, so you’d find it when you got batteries that did,” Tom said, producing it from a drawer with a flourish. Hal grimaced at him. “I might not have told you where I put it.”

Hal kneaded one temple. “Nope. You did. I kind of remember this conversation now.”

“You remember what I told you when you got like this after you and Carol first started dating?” Tom asked, grinning.

Hal made a face at him. “I remember you asking me if I wanted to know what your wise Inuit grandmother told you about love and then making me watch like five hours of _Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood_ when I said yes.”

“And it’s as true now as it was then: tv doesn’t charge an hourly rate to keep kids and drunk people occupied,” Tom said solemnly.

Hal threw a pillow at him, and Tom laughed and gathered him into a loose hug.

“Is it at least progress that I didn’t need to get drunk this time to talk about my feelings?” Hal asked.

“Probably. And you haven’t asked why you have to feel things or called emotions stupid, which I think definitely counts as progress,” Tom chuckled. He leaned back but kept his hand on Hal’s shoulder. “Hal, you’ve got this. You just have to get your nose up and level off. Your stitches come out next week. This,” Tom touched the cast lightly, “comes off in a month. I’m pretty sure you know what you want out of whatever you’re doing with this guy. You took a hit, but you’re doing okay.”

Hal colored slightly and looked away. 

“Thanks, man.” He cleared his throat. “If I grouse about it being a whole month, you’re going to ignore me and turn on the game, aren’t you?”

“I might,” Tom said. “Or I might tell you Carol hid an emergency pint of Chubby Hubby behind the frozen peas.”

“You guys are the best, you know that?” Hal asked.

His arm hurt, and his chest hurt, and he was asking more from the pair of them than he liked to without doing something in return, and he was probably sabotaging whatever strange thing he had with Bruce, but nothing was all that bad.

“Somebody’s got to secure the home front,” Tom told him, dropping his hand. “Try to remember that this part? Just being you? You don’t have to do it on your own.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hal muttered, shaking his head. He pulled Tom back into a one-armed hug, ignoring the ache in his skin from the pressure.

Tom patted him on the back. “Come on. You can mope while you eat, and we can catch the second quarter.”

* * *

Diana cracked her neck and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “You and Lantern?”

Bruce paused, his expression turning carefully neutral, then started circling her again. 

“Yes.” He was grateful for the lack of an audience in the training room, if this was what she wanted to talk about. He’d assumed the invitation to spar had been a pretext to discuss the recent political turbulence in Kaznia.

“That seems ill-advised,” Diana pointed out, twirling her blunt training sword idly. She lunged suddenly, her only warning a feint toward Bruce’s left.

“It is.” He didn’t fall for it but still only just managed to parry the thrust. “You and your princess?”

“She’s been engaged to a minor nobleman,” Diana sighed. “Her duty is to her father and her country, but it weighs on her.”

“Arranged marriages don’t necessarily preclude outside romantic attachments,” Bruce reminded her. “Especially in cases where the affair won’t produce offspring or inheritance rights derive from the mother and make legitimacy a moot point.”

He managed to get close enough to tag her on the hip, and she snorted and rapped him lightly on the collarbone. It stung, and he swallowed a grunt of pain.

“Frustration is no excuse for such risky moves,” Diana scolded.

“I assume you know her well enough it wouldn’t be that risky,” Bruce said, a smirk flitting across his lips.

Diana rolled her eyes. “Not what I meant, and you know it.”

They sized each other up again, each looking for a suitable opening. Bruce considered and rejected a number of options, none of them appropriate for an opponent faster and stronger than he was. There were times when he’d have tried them anyway in order to experiment with ways to fix the mistake, but they only had the room for another half-hour.

“We could use bucklers,” she said after a moment. “You’re better with a strong defense in place.”

“The point of these exercises is to remove weaknesses, not cater to them,” Bruce reminded her.

“I thought the point of these exercises was to see who got to pick the next film,” Diana laughed.

“That, too,” Bruce allowed. He advanced warily. “Has anyone else noticed?”

He’d done his best not to tip his hand, though there was only so much that could be done in a group that included a telepath and a man with extraordinarily acute senses. But it was sometimes difficult to tear his eyes from Hal’s smile, and he was sure there were meetings where the only thing keeping his secret were the cowl’s lenses.

“You and Lantern?” Diana asked, shooting a pointed look at his leading foot. Bruce grimaced and adjusted his stance. “You need to stop sparring with Shayera so much. It’s reinforcing your instinct to assume your opponent has a high center of gravity.”

“I’m reasonably sure telling her I’m not sparring with her because it’s bad for my form would lead directly to sparring with her,” Bruce said. Theoretically, their sessions were for Shayera’s benefit; she was still learning the full range of human weaponry and what combat moves to expect from human opponents. In practice, it was usually just the pair of them blowing off steam. Shayera preferred hitting things to talking, a quality he appreciated immensely.

“Think of it as a chance to practice being diplomatic,” Diana suggested, closing with him.

Bruce brought his sword up to block her swing, and she used the momentum of her charge to knock him off his feet. He rolled with it, grabbing her belt and bringing her with him. A knee planted against her hip sent her tumbling over and past him, and she tucked her head and landed on her shoulder, rolling neatly to come up on her feet at the same time as Bruce did.

“I didn’t notice anything unusual between you.” Diana transferred her sword to her left hand and tugged her bodice back into place. “I overheard Flash teasing him about walking in on the two of you.”

“I suppose that’s mildly comforting,” Bruce said. 

He wished again that he’d left after debriefing Hal that night. Seeing allies in pain or injured was an uncomfortable experience at the best of times, and it was easier to maintain the professional distance a working relationship required if he could avoid openly acknowledging their vulnerabilities. He’d previously made a point of only staying until visiting hours resumed or the patient woke up, but then Hal had smiled at him and asked him to come closer, and all his better judgment had melted like so much frost in the sun. And now, courtesy of that, something Hal had obviously wished to keep between the two of them had become semi-public knowledge.

“Only mildly?” Diana asked, smiling.

“Flash can be very loud when he wants to be.”

“Does this mean you’re becoming more open to the idea of emotional entanglements?” she teased.

“You’re trying to provoke me into going on the offensive.” Bruce wiped the sweat from his face. “It’s not going to work.”

“Spending the entire session on defense has to be boring,” Diana said. “None of my teachers would have tolerated it long.”

“None of your teachers had humans for students,” Bruce reminded her.

“No,” she agreed, “but at the same time, there are marked differences in talent even among the Amazons. Many of my sisters learned combat skills without developing a taste for it, or did their utmost to master arms without managing to progress much beyond bare competence. To work only at defending oneself is to ignore the dynamics of battle.”

“Point,” Bruce conceded. He lunged at her, aiming a neat thrust at her midsection.

“Would it help if I questioned your wisdom?” Diana asked, parrying it. She used his momentum to slip behind him, then found herself deflecting an off-balance strike as he spun to face her. It was a distraction, keeping her occupied only long enough to let him regain his footing, and she slapped it away easily. “You don’t usually do things you think are ill-advised unless you have no other choice.”

Bruce snorted and dodged a blow. He’d devoted his time, energy, and fortune to a fight he knew in his bones was unwinnable. He’d joined a group that was equally liable to fail spectacularly at its mission or become the very threat it stood against. He knew the intolerable risks of becoming friends with the men and women he fought alongside, and he still found himself unable to completely avoid it. 

“The overwhelming majority of my life is ill-advised. At this point, I’m down to trying not to do foolish things without a good reason.”

“You’re serious about him, then?” she asked, falling back and leading him toward the center of the room. 

Bruce smothered a laugh and followed her. Serious wasn’t, he thought, precisely the right word for it. His self-control was hard-won, and he’d become accustomed to being able to rely on it in even the direst of straits. One kiss from Hal, and suddenly he was back to fighting every undisciplined impulse that crossed his mind. 

“I suspect we’re in roughly the same position,” Bruce offered, shaking his head. 

“At least Lantern is a warrior. Being with someone who isn’t, after all this time... it’s strange.” Diana’s blue eyes softened, and she gestured for him to begin again. “Is he serious about you?”

“I don’t know.” He made a series of feints, then combined a short thrust with a shoulder-check. It was a question he’d avoided posing, in no small part because it felt ridiculous to speculate on it when he had yet to let Hal touch him.

“Better,” Diana encouraged, stepping to the side and meeting his blade with her own. “Have you tried asking him?”

“I couldn’t trust the answer,” he said, grunting with the effort of blocking her swing. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I can be rather difficult at times.”

“It may have come to my attention once or twice,” she told him, laughing. “It’s no small part of your charm.”

Diana broke away and retreated again, her sword almost dancing in her hand. She raised her eyebrows and invited Bruce to follow with a smile.

“It tends to grow less charming over time,” Bruce said grimly, moving to intercept her. “Ask any of my exes.”

“Are you certain you’re not simply trying to avoid admitting that you care?” Diana asked, circling him.

“I want everything he’s willing to give, for as long as he’s willing to give it,” he said, his voice tight. “I’m simply trying not to delude myself about how much or how long that’s likely to be.”

Bruce darted forward and aimed an underhand swing at her wrist.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s almost as stubborn as you are,” she countered, catching his blade on her handguard. “And I believe he’s familiar with the idea that very few worthwhile things are easy. Your pessimism might be as premature as your attempt to disarm me.”

“Failure in the pursuit of a noble goal,” Bruce said. He frowned and glanced at the clock. “Would it be rude to keep going?”

“Yes. And Arrow would just pick the lock,” Diana pointed out, “and then you wouldn’t be able to decline his party invitations anymore.”

“True.” Though if Oliver knew who was behind the mask, the primary reason he’d been avoiding social engagements with him would vanish along with whatever hope Bruce had of maintaining his anonymity as Batman. As it stood, he had no interest whatsoever in socializing with colleagues under such skewed circumstances if he could avoid it. It felt petty and disrespectful, like an exercise in voyeurism.

Bruce lowered the sword and offered his hand. Diana gripped it firmly, then pulled him into a sudden embrace. He stiffened reflexively, then forced himself to relax and threw his arm around her shoulders. 

“Audrey will find her way eventually,” he assured her.

“I know.” Diana smiled sadly. “If she doesn’t, I will still have her friendship. There’s more than one kind of love, after all.” She released him and stepped back. “And none of them are weaknesses, Bruce.”

“A distinctly Amazon philosophy,” Bruce said, pulling the cowl and cape back on. He cleaned the sword carefully and returned it to its scabbard before handing it back to Diana.

“One man’s world would be the better for embracing,” she told him. “Also, I’m afraid I must insist on _The Thin Man_.”

“But _Bringing Up Baby_ is the better example of the genre,” Bruce protested.

“You’re just partial to Hepburn,” Diana chuckled.

“Everyone’s partial to Hepburn,” Bruce said flatly. “Her accomplishments as an actress are undeniable.”

The door burst open, and Oliver swept in, grinning broadly and brandishing Shayera’s bow. Bruce eyed it with trepidation, and Diana burst out laughing.

“You guys staying?” Oliver asked. “I think I might need witnesses when I totally master this thing in five minutes and Shayera has to cover my on-call shifts for the next two weeks.”

“Batman has very little time to locate a rare recording,” Diana said, and Bruce wondered at how she could keep a straight face while making the excuse for him. “I, however, would love to stay.”


	12. Chapter 12

Hal looked around the cavern and made a face at the bank of dead electronics decorating the near wall. The lair was definitely deserted. The steel catwalks and scaffolds were in good condition but covered in dust, and the polished floor of the natural cave bore no traces of human activity.

“So, I get why I’m here,” he said, raising his voice so Bruce could hear him from halfway across the vault. “But how exactly did you get roped into doing this instead of dealing with whatever the hell Diana and Flash are taking care of?”

“Kaznia’s top nuclear scientists going missing,” Bruce supplied. He stopped to examine a small stone outcropping before moving on.

“That,” Hal agreed, waving his uninjured arm. “Flash could have had this place cleared in under a minute.”

He hadn’t really been expecting excitement or mystery when Oliver had suggested sweeping the lab. The intel Oliver had picked up identifying it as an extremely old and extremely defunct SKULL base hadn’t even been verifiable. That there had really been something to investigate had been a mild surprise. Checking it out was just an exercise in due diligence, a routine patrol to make sure there wasn’t anything that could be looted or repurposed by an active criminal outfit. It made perfect sense for him to pick it up, since he was barely back on duty, and even that much was by the skin of his teeth. Bruce, though, was another matter. It seemed like a waste of resources.

“Flash would likely have missed a great deal in doing so,” Bruce said.

“Seriously, B,” Hal sighed. “This place was abandoned. The cobwebs have cobwebs. There’s nothing to miss.”

“You’ve finished your scan, then?” Bruce asked archly.

Hal scowled at his back before resuming the ring’s scan. He didn’t particularly appreciate the feeling that Bruce was babysitting him, which was the only explanation he could come up with for Bruce agreeing to handle something like this instead of insisting on accompanying Diana or skulking around Gotham looking for trouble.

“Still nothing,” Hal reported. “Because it’s abandoned and has been for decades.”

“It’s mothballed, Lantern. There’s a difference,” Bruce said, shaking his head. 

He circled a loose knot of knee-height stalagmites, and Hal wondered idly if they’d featured any sort of precautionary measures against impalement when the base had been active. Probably not, he thought. He had yet to see any sort of OSHA-compliant supervillain lair.

“We’ve found zero equipment, zero power sources, and zero defensive arrays,” Hal pointed out. “What makes you think SKULL had any intention of ever coming back here?”

“Locally, the ration stockpiles, the anticorrosive agents applied to the built-in fittings, and the considerable amount of care taken to conceal the entrance,” Bruce explained. He moved around another stone spike jutting from the floor, this one as tall as he was, and Hal bit back a comment about maintaining visual contact. “In more general terms, SKULL’s habit of detonating decommissioned facilities. Someone wanted the option of bringing this location back online.”

Hal started to argue, then stopped. He’d gone over the file on the flight out, and even if he hadn’t had time to memorize it the way Bruce probably had, he had to admit that Bruce was right. A large part of the international law enforcement community’s problem with SKULL was due to the lack of evidence they left behind. The base was old, but not so old that it was from before the burn-and-run routine had become SKULL’s standard operating procedure. He raised the ring again and restarted his part of the sweep.

“Did you really punch out the mayor?” Hal asked. He hoped the change of topic would cover the tacit admission of defeat over the general importance of the mission.

“No. I punched Matt Hagen, who was posing as the mayor.”

Hal pursed his lips. “Matt Hagen, the actor who was crippled in a car crash? _That_ Matt Hagen?”

“You’ve heard of Clayface?” Bruce asked, his tone edging toward a particular shade of weariness Hal suspected was only ever aimed at him.

“The sentient mudslide nightmare that can only exist in a place like Gotham? That Clayface?” Hal snorted.

“Yes,” Bruce sighed. “Clayface is Matt Hagen.”

Hal tried to process the information and failed. “You know, I’ve done a lot of research on jet crashes. And I do mean a lot. And I’ve never come across one where it was so bad that the pilot was turned into a sludge-monster. I’ve also never come across a car crash that exerts even a tenth of the force that jet crashes tend to.”

“It wasn’t a result of the car accident, and this is a matter of public record, Lantern,” Bruce told him. Hal could practically hear him rolling his eyes.

Bruce paused and cocked his head, and Hal fell silent immediately, listening. 

“Northwest quadrant,” Bruce said after a moment.

Hal turned to scan the section when his ring flashed. He frowned at what the ring was picking up, confused at the sudden electrical readings. The circuits had been dead less than a minute ago, and he’d found no power sources capable of bringing them back to life on his initial investigation of the base.

“Fall back, B,” he said. “Something’s--”

Hal felt the sudden charge in the air around them before the blue-white flash rolled over him, blotting out everything but the Batman-shaped shadow on the cavern’s floor. He barely had enough time to get a shield up before the sonic boom accompanying the lightning strike rocked him back against the now-active instrument panels. The dull ache in his arm flared to a sharp pain, and the raw scar on his chest throbbed as it pulled tight. He couldn’t see Bruce anymore, and he tamped down the surge of panic rolling through him. With the ring it was the work of a moment to disconnect the battery banks which had flared to life from the components they were meant to power, and the electronics that had been blinking on faded back to black. He’d worry later about how the hell they’d gone from completely inert to full capacity in under five seconds. Right now, he needed to find Bruce.

“Batman?” he called. The hum and whine of machine output fading into static and then silence was his only answer. “Batman, please respond!”

The ring burned bright as he coasted to the floor, illuminating the cavern like a small green sun. Hal cursed the strange shadows thrown by every natural feature in the cavern and the way Bruce’s suit was designed to blend into them. He moved to the last spot he’d seen Bruce, his flight slow and careful in case he triggered the same defense that had already struck once. Ozone scorched his nose and throat, and he fought down the throbbing tightness in his arm. He wouldn’t be any good to Bruce if he went down the same way, and he’d be even less useful if he let his injuries slow him down.

Hal’s heart lurched in his chest when he was finally able to pick out a human shape among the shadows. Bruce was lying too still by far at the base of a short stalagmite. Hal knelt quickly and ran his hands over the armor. Bruce’s breathing was shallow but steady, and Hal couldn’t feel anything out of place until he reached the cowl. The black leather gave way with a crunch under his fingers, and Hal’s throat constricted. Blood seeped from the edge of the mask.

“No, no, no,” he whispered. “Come on, B, don’t do this to me.”

Hal barely registered making the gurney that appeared under Bruce, the green light as solid as any permanent object. He added the blocks to stabilize Bruce’s head, a dim memory from the few days he’d spent years ago serving as a living prop for the medevac crews meant to save pilots’ lives in the event of an accident on-carrier. Some part of his brain distantly noted that he’d assumed he’d be the one on the gurney if it ever came to it.

Leaving the base was a blur of green light and dark kevlar that seemed to last an eternity. Hal found them enclosed in the relative safety of the batplane without clearly recalling how he’d gotten them there. He set Bruce down gently, his heart pounding at the amount of blood leaking down Bruce’s face and neck. Hal set about cautiously prizing off Bruce’s mask using a construct. The smell of scorched electronics clung to Bruce’s armor, leaving Hal to hope that he at least didn’t have to worry about getting electrocuted by the very thing meant to keep Bruce intact. He tried to steady Bruce’s head, his right hand clumsy around the plaster, and felt the entire curve of Bruce’s skull shift sickeningly beneath his fingers.

Hal swallowed thickly and kept going, praying to whatever gods might be listening that he was wrong, that it was fixable, that this wasn’t how he lost Bruce. The construct cut through something embedded in the leather with an audible crunch, and then the entire cowl gave way under Hal’s hands. He lowered Bruce’s head to the floor and carefully removed the mask. The reinforced leather peeled off a handsome face far too pale against the bright blood smeared across it, but otherwise unmarred. The cowl crumpled against Hal’s fingers as he probed for the source of the blood, and he stared stupidly as it slid off over dark hair and crunched against the cold metal of the deck. He ran his fingers gingerly through Bruce’s hair and choked back a hysterical laugh when he found no trace of damage. He tested the cowl and felt the broken-crockery shift that had almost sent him into a blind panic.

The blood was coming from somewhere, though, and it was with shaking fingers he searched for the wound. The pressure from the cowl meant it was everywhere but seemed to have been coming from nowhere, and after what felt like forever, it occurred to him to check the cowl for evidence of punctures. He found a small rip in the leather and checked the area it would have been over while Bruce was wearing it. A blessedly shallow laceration that was refusing to clot was immediately evident. Hal applied pressure and distracted himself by wiping the blood from Bruce’s face and hair as best he could.

Hal used the ring to search the various compartments and storage until he found the emergency medical kit he was sure Bruce would have stashed in the plane, then rooted through it until he found a clotting powder that would close the wound. He read the instructions twice, took a deep breath, then read them a third time. He was too rattled to trust himself with the timing and began counting off.

“One-mississippi, two-mississippi, three-mississippi--”

“What are you doing?” Bruce mumbled, beginning to stir. Hal’s heart skipped a beat as he applied the powder, and Bruce hissed in discomfort.

“Okay, so, you got hit by some kind of artificial lightning and smashed the absolute shit out of your cowl on a stalactite. You might have a concussion, or superpowers, or something horrible that hasn’t occurred to me yet. I really, really, really need you to give me something, here. Today’s date, president’s name, anything,” Hal pleaded softly.

Blue eyes focused on his, then closed.

“Stalagmite.”

“What.” Hal swallowed.

“Stalactites descend from the ceiling,” Bruce said. Hal blinked at him, utterly speechless. “Stalagmites rise from the floor. I’m not nearly injured enough to have collided with the roof of that cave.”

“You _unbelievable_ asshole.”

Hal started laughing, relief flooding through him. He thought he might start crying if he tried to stop, and so he found himself almost doubled over, his forehead resting on Bruce’s broad chest and his shoulders shaking uncontrollably. A heavy gauntleted hand settled between his shoulder blades and rubbed gently.

“What happened, exactly?” Bruce asked after Hal subsided. His eyes were focused, and he looked less like he was sliding into shock, and Hal started to relax in spite of himself.

“Yeah, no,” Hal spat, straightening up and wiping his eyes. “Do I need to get you to a doctor? That gets answered before anything else happens here. Because I’m not even slightly exaggerating when I say I thought a quarter-inch of leather was all that was keeping your brains off the floor.”

Bruce took a deep breath and flexed his muscles experimentally, then sat up carefully.

“Minor electrical burns, moderate bruising, and some tingling in the extremities,” Bruce told him. “It would seem the suit absorbed the worst of it. So yes, I’ll be seeing a doctor, but no, I don’t need one immediately.”

He reached up to feel his head, and Hal seized his wrist.

“You’ve got a two-inch gash on your scalp right past the hairline. It’s fairly shallow, and nothing seemed serious. I’m pretty sure it’s going to need stitches, though,” Hal said calmly. “But I just fucking got it closed with some of that emergency military-grade styptic powder bullshit I found in your med-kit, and so help me god I’m going to lose it if you open it back up poking it at.”

“Noted.” Bruce dropped his hand back to his lap. “Should I even ask about the cowl?”

“I’m thinking it’s probably a write-off, between that _alarmingly_ skull-like ceramic plate being in a million pieces and the tear from the spike that actually got through and you having bled all over it,” Hal told him. His stomach clenched at the memory of how the armor plate had felt and the thought of what might have happened if Bruce hadn’t been wearing what was essentially a helmet.

“I was more concerned about concealing my face than salvaging equipment at this point,” Bruce grunted, his eyes tightening. 

Hal scrubbed at his face and tried to tamp down on his frustration. How Bruce managed to be almost as unreadable with the cowl off was beyond him. The color was coming back into Bruce’s skin, and Hal found himself in an uncomfortable emotional eddy of relief and rattled nerves.

“You don’t have a spare on you?” Hal asked, sitting back. “You’re honestly telling me this is something you don’t have an elaborate back-up plan for.”

“I find being mauled to the point that I need to replace my suit is usually a good time to regroup or, conceivably, call it a night,” Bruce said. “So no, I don’t typically carry one with me.”

“I’ll make you a construct,” Hal promised. “Though I’m kind of getting used to it. You might have mentioned that you were hot.”

Bruce gave him a long look before taking the bait. “Did you just assume I wasn’t?”

“I might have made certain assumptions about who’s given up on a love life to the point that they spend their nights punching people in the face,” Hal admitted, sitting back on his heels.

“Why don’t you just tell me what happened?” Bruce asked. He started to get to his feet, and Hal put his hands on Bruce’s shoulders. He wanted to drag him into a hug, but the desire was dampened by the pain in his arm fully penetrating the adrenaline swamping his system.

“Just take it easy for five minutes, would you?” Hal muttered. “Christ. You almost got literally brained by that defense system. If you absolutely can’t sit still, maybe park it in a passenger seat and strap in.” He shot Bruce a preemptive glare. “And if you so much as breathe ‘autopilot,’ we’re going to spend the entire flight back listening to Journey.”

Bruce leaned back against the bulkhead and raised his eyebrows, his gaze resting on Hal’s broken arm.

“I’m fine,” Hal said sullenly. He’d call his doctor as soon as they got home, and he was sure she’d back him up on that. “I’ve been cleared for some activity, which is why I’m even out here with you instead of going stir-crazy staring at a screen for the rest of the night. And before you even say anything, I used the ring for practically everything.”

“Why don’t you put the sling back on and let the system do what it was designed for?” Bruce asked, his voice sliding into the eminently-reasonable tone he used whenever he felt some particular need to drive Hal completely up a wall. “And have I ever criticized your musical preferences?”

“Criticized? No,” Hal said. “Made that face while maintaining a stoic silence? Yes.”

“Are you sure that’s not an inferiority complex?” Bruce asked, tilting his head.

Hal stared at him, taken slightly aback by the way Bruce was obviously checking him over. He was covered in blood and had to be feeling it himself--he’d been down for the count for longer than Hal had seen him out before--but Bruce was sitting there calmly checking Hal for any unconfessed injuries like he was fine. The things those lenses hid, Hal thought.

Hal suddenly wondered if he’d ever get to see Bruce without the mask again. It was strange, watching the subtle changes he’d learned to read for Bruce’s meanings and moods against what the rest of his face was doing under the cowl. It was also strange to realize that he wasn’t just handsome; Hal hadn’t expected him to seem so much more human without the mask. There was a trace of humor about the way he said things that Hal had had to work to pick up on before. Without the lenses in the way, it was obvious when he wasn’t serious. Hal shook himself. Now was not the time to get lost in making sure he could remember what Bruce looked like once he glued the cowl to his head and never took it off again.

“You’re going to insist on flying even though you probably have a concussion, aren’t you?” Hal asked sourly.

“I’m going to insist on taking the pilot’s chair,” Bruce said. “I am, however, engaging the autopilot.”

Hal grudgingly restored the sling construct and glowered at him. “Fine, but we’re still listening to Journey.”

“If you want.” Bruce started to get up, and Hal put his hand against Bruce’s chest.

“Five minutes, spooky,” Hal said, his voice soft. He was sure he could deal with it if Bruce passed out again, but he was equally sure he didn’t want to. Not to mention the third-degree he was already in for from Clark about Bruce’s injuries. His eyes lingered on the stray blood smears along Bruce’s hairline before he made himself look away. “You have any idea the sort of heat I’m going to take for letting you get hurt on my watch?”

Bruce let his head rest against the hull and chuckled, long and low and like the pain was draining out of him. Hal snorted until Bruce’s hand was suddenly covering his, and then it was hard not to kiss him.

“The sort of heat you’re going to take?” Bruce laughed. “I think you’ll be fine, Lantern.”

“I think you underestimate exactly how attached the Kryptonian’s gotten to the idea of you being in one piece,” Hal grumbled.

“You do understand that you being out here with me is a function of me having promised to play it safe, right?” Bruce asked. “You’re a force to be reckoned with, yes, but you’re still healing. If anyone’s going to get raked over the coals for this, it would be me. You can relax.”

“Even though you’re the one covered in blood?” Hal demanded. He wasn’t an idiot, in spite of Bruce occasionally acting like he was. More importantly, he knew the score. He had a ring capable of doing practically anything he could imagine, and Bruce had a utility belt and a few tricks up his sleeve. If they came limping home with Bruce looking like he’d taken the worst of it, Hal couldn’t blame anyone for thinking he’d fallen down on the job.

“I had to swear an oath to a Thanagarian god that I wouldn’t engage in any, and I am quoting Shayera directly here, ‘lone-wolf macho bullshit’ that might endanger you. So yes, I believe me being the one covered in blood wouldn’t change the assignation of blame,” Bruce told him. “I got the impression she was rather upset at being reminded that you’re breakable.”

“And you indulged her?” Hal asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I found myself sympathizing with her to a certain degree on that point,” Bruce said drily, his eyes straying to Hal’s chest.

“You make it sound like there was a meeting,” Hal grunted, flushing.

Bruce frowned slightly. “There was.”

“About me,” Hal said flatly, any trace of relief evaporating.

“About whether or not anyone was willing to entertain the argument that you _wanting_ to resume missions before having been cleared to do so by a doctor meant that you _should_ resume missions before having been cleared to do so by a doctor,” Bruce explained, his guard suddenly up.

“So yes, about me.” Hal ran his fingers through his hair, and the belated recollection that he still had Bruce’s blood under his fingernails didn’t help. “And you all felt this was appropriate why?”

“I believe the primary argument in its favor was the complete and utter shambles that passed for a discussion about you resuming monitor-duty,” Bruce told him. “I can only assume no one was misreporting how badly it went.”

“And it was ridiculous, because I can watch a screen with the best of them,” Hal growled. “Just because I can’t fight doesn’t mean I can’t do _something_. And my stitches came out two days ago, so--”

“You’re supposed to be resting,” Bruce reminded him quietly. “And in any case, these discussions usually go more smoothly if everyone has had a chance to clarify their positions beforehand.”

“And you all concluded that I should be allowed out of the house, so long as I had a minder?” Hal demanded.

Bruce examined Hal’s face, and it was strange to be the one behind the mask while Bruce was bare-faced.

“It’s likely useful at this point to differentiate between policing your personal life, which absolutely no one was trying to do, and limiting your participation in the League due to exigent circumstances,” he said.

“Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, because there’s no way in hell I could have picked up on it myself,” Hal snapped.

“That’s not what I said,” Bruce pointed out.

“You might as well have,” Hal said, pacing from one end of the cabin to the other. It suddenly felt like it was closing in around him, and he longed for the open sky. “You know what? Just fly the damn plane. Get us home. I apparently have some people I need to tell exactly where they can shove it.”

Bruce got to his feet, and Hal wondered if the unreadable look Bruce gave him on his way to the cockpit translated to him thinking Hal was being childish. The adrenaline was finally receding, and his arm was killing him, and a nasty sliver of suspicion was working its way through his mind.

“How did you vote?” he asked, his voice going flat.

“You’re injured, Lantern,” Bruce sighed. “I can understand the need to call you in during genuine emergencies. I couldn’t support you being assigned to missions simply because you’re bored and find being grounded uncomfortable.”

“Fuck you, Bruce.”

Hal buckled himself into a seat as far away from the cockpit as he could get and tried to keep his hands from shaking.

* * *

“So, you guys had a meeting to decide if I could still play hero?” Hal asked coldly.

“Hi, Hal. Nice to see you. How was your night?” Ollie asked, ignoring both the question and Hal’s stormy expression. He limped across the den to the fridge. “Mine was awesome. I got kicked right in the junk by a ninja, and then B ratted me out because he hates it when people are happy. To top it off, I came home to an irate BFF who I hope to god hasn’t just been sitting here in the dark all night waiting for me like a D-lister on parole, because I have a huge tv and a cable package to match, and the remote was right there the entire time. You want a beer?”

“No, I want a fucking explanation,” Hal said, crossing his arms. He realized a moment too late that he was only drawing attention to the main defense Oliver was likely to field.

“Okay,” Oliver said cheerily. 

He fished a pack of frozen peas out of the freezer, then pulled two bottles out of the fridge. He opened both and put one in front of Hal before plopping down with the other in a comfortable-looking chair wedged next to the fireplace and draping the peas over his crotch.

“So, you remember that honest-to-god _screaming match_ we all got into when you showed back up for work before your stitches were even out? Because I sure do. It’s actually the first time I can remember wishing B hung out around the clubhouse, because he’s just enough of an asshole to try putting the Boy Scout and Diana in time out.” Oliver glared at him. “I had a more rational discussion with the assassin who was in love with me after she tried to kill me, Hal. And that was genuinely not a record I was interested in breaking.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Hal said, looking away. It hadn’t been _quite_ that bad, at least. Diana had been aghast that he was trying to report for duty while injured, and Clark hadn’t seen the objection to him sitting in a chair and calling people whenever anything that needed tending to came up. He was reasonably sure the argument that had erupted around them had been about something else entirely. He picked up the bottle and took a sip, feeling the first prickle of doubt that he was as in the right as he could have been.

“Yeah, it was,” Oliver said firmly. “It really was. Wally asked if the band was breaking up afterwards. You guys yelled loud enough that I had to comfort Wally. It was like mopping up the aftermath of a puppy-kicking contest.” He shook his head and repositioned the peas. “And basically... have you ever been to an intervention?”

“No, and I’m not sure I appreciate the comparison.”

“I’m not saying you needed an intervention,” Oliver sighed, rolling his eyes. “It’s just that emotions run high, and everybody’s got an agenda. It’s practically guaranteed to be a shitshow if you don’t practice a little first. So you do prep meetings, before you have the real deal. Get everybody on the same page, make sure everybody knows what they’re asking for. It works a lot better than just throwing everyone in a room and whoever yells the loudest or punches the hardest gets their way.”

“So it was just logical to cut me out of the loop?” Hal demanded. Exhaustion was starting to set in, and Oliver making sense wasn’t helping.

“No. Though I knew that’s how you’d take it, so of course B told you about it first chance he got.” Oliver shook his head. “That guy’s just unbelievable sometimes. He gets outvoted about even having the meeting in the first place, so he makes sure to stir up a fight about it afterwards.”

“It came up in conversation,” Hal said shortly.

“Yeah, I just bet it did,” Oliver scoffed. “Look, man. We knew you were going to push it once you’d healed up a little more. It’s what you do. If you were happy with what you get handed to you, you wouldn’t have what you do now. And guess what nobody ever thought we’d need a party line on? Which was just incredibly myopic on our part, because I swear to fucking Christ, B’s pushed through more injuries than a pro-football team all by himself. Just because _he_ tells us to kiss his ass whenever he needs some downtime doesn’t mean everybody else is going to. We should have, at some point, all decided whether or not it’s going to be okay for people to keep showing up even when they should be benched. We didn’t, so we got to argue about whether or not it’s okay for _you_ to show up with a _broken arm_ this _one time_.”

“Just out of curiosity, where’d you fall on that?” Hal asked.

“Dude, you can make yourself a tank to ride around in if things get hairy,” Oliver said, spreading his hands. He winced when the peas slipped out of place. “How do you think I voted? I mean, it’d be one thing if you were still on pain meds or the ring decided it wasn’t going to work for some weirdo alien reason. You’re not. It works fine. So far as I can see, there’s no reason for you not to be doing anything everyone else is doing, if you’re comfortable with it.” Oliver swirled his beer in the bottle. “B probably left out the part where he was all ‘he’s got a city to protect and a sector to patrol and a broken arm and we need to make it clear that injured members won’t be expected to fulfill their normal duties until fully healed,’ didn’t he?”

“Nope,” Hal said, stifling a wince. Bruce had just left out the part where it seemed like a reasonable position to have taken.

“What about the part where he took off one of his jackboots and banged it on the table while shouting that he’d bury us?” Oliver asked.

“He probably left that part out because it didn’t happen,” Hal said.

“Probably,” Oliver agreed. He shot Hal a lopsided grin before spreading his arms. “Look, I get it. You think it was a shitty thing to do. You’re mad at me. I’d be mad at me, too, if I were in your shoes. But we were trying to not have another full-bore meltdown in the middle of the clubhouse by having a trial meltdown first. In my defense, it was decided in your favor.” He took a long pull off his beer. “And also it was completely Wally’s idea.”

Hal looked away. “You’re still an asshole.”

“But I’m a charming asshole,” Oliver pointed out smugly.

“And it was a shitty thing to do.” Not quite as shitty as Hal had originally assumed, but still. Hal rubbed his eyes. It had been a long night.

“The shittiest,” Oliver agreed easily.

“And I am still mad at you.”

“I’m mad at me on your behalf.”

“And I think we need to have a meeting and establish that we don’t deliberately shut members out of the voting process,” Hal sighed. And he needed to call Bruce.

“Just don’t mention the word ‘quorum’ in front of B, if you can help it,” Oliver told him.

“I’m not talking about a quorum, I’m talking about not having meetings _around_ other members,” Hal said, exasperated. “Because that is some bullshit, right there. And do I even want to know?”

“He went on a fucking _tear_ at the Boy Scout about it,” Oliver snickered. “Did you know he could look ashamed of himself? Because I didn’t. I’d have put money on that stern frown supervillains get and the friendly smile everyone else gets being his only expressions. Not, as it turns out, true. Or at least he broadens his range when B’s having a stroke at him. It took Wally running B down to keep him from stomping right back to the elevator.”

“Everybody else was cool with the no-Hals-allowed meeting?” Hal asked, rubbing the back of his neck. Bruce had tried to shut the whole meeting down. Bruce had tried to shut the whole meeting down, and of course he hadn’t mentioned it when Hal had been snarling at him about it and then giving him the silent treatment the entire flight back to base.

“That _really_ wasn’t what it was about, man,” Oliver protested. “I mean, it was basically everyone sitting down and talking out whether or not they were down with you working while busted-up, and why or why not. Diana was on the hell-no side, because I guess they’ve got capital-R rules about that where she comes from. If things aren’t on fire and there’s no invading army, your ass stays off-duty until you’re ready to go again. I guess you got B’s take on it from the horse’s mouth.”

“Something like that,” Hal muttered. Bruce had more or less shut down when Hal had started with the righteous indignation.

“J’onn thought we were crazy for even having the conversation in the first place, I guess for the same reasons Diana had,” Oliver continued. “Everybody else figured you were gonna do what you were gonna do, and it’s not like you’re not a grown man or that we couldn’t use an extra hand, and everybody agreed to watch your back that much more carefully until the cast comes off if the three of them would shut their pieholes about it.” He stretched his leg carefully and propped it up on a footstool. “Since you weren’t there to take things personally and make everyone’s point for them about the whole grown-man thing by throwing a tantrum, it was less of a free-for-all.”

“So this is my fault, now?” Hal asked, looking up.

“It would be big of you to own up to it,” Oliver said magnanimously.

“Go to hell, Ollie,” Hal sighed.

“Anyway, like I said. Everybody got to say how they felt about it, and why, and the Buzzkill Triad got out-voted. So instead of a huge fight when you inevitably decided you were bored and wanted to kick some ass instead of watching daytime television, you got reasonable terms and dissenters who already knew they weren’t going to win an argument,” Oliver said. “I don’t think it would have gone down like that if you’d been there for the first round. Be as mad as you want about how we did it, but try to remember that you got what you wanted out of it.” He finished his beer. “And that if you took a page out of B’s book and told everyone to go hang when you get an arm ripped out of its socket by a mutant lizard, none of this would have ever happened.”

Hal stared at him and sipped his beer.

“Mutant lizard?” he asked finally.

“Mutant _space_ -lizard,” Oliver said, getting to his feet gingerly. “Whatever. I mostly try not to think about the intergalactic assholes you’re up against when you’re out there by yourself.” He shrugged. “All I’m saying is that if you were reasonable about it from the word go, we wouldn’t need a game-plan to deal with you being unreasonable. And believe me, I recognize the irony of calling B reasonable in this situation, but he did at least have the good sense to take a few weeks off.”

“You lost me,” Hal confessed. “I mean, genuinely.”

He suspected he wasn’t going to like the answer, and he was torn between just dropping it and pressing Oliver for an explanation. Ollie opened the fridge and pulled out another beer. He caught Hal’s look, misinterpreted it, and sighed. 

“Did I mention that the ninja who kicked me right in the junk is an ex? Because the ninja who kicked me right in the junk was an ex. If there’s a night for doubling up on the traditional post-mission beer, it’s when you get your nads punted by an ex who’s using her sick ninja skills to provide security for a bunch of scumbag drug-runners.”

“You need to start doing background checks on your girlfriends, Ollie,” Hal said, shaking his head. “What did you mean about B taking a few weeks off? I don’t remember him doing that.”

“Well, I mean, he didn’t say ‘I’m taking a few weeks off,’ because I guess they’d take away his asshole card if he wasn’t at least kind of a dick about it,” Oliver told him. He settled back in the chair. “He just hung up on the Boy Scout every time he called for a few weeks and told Wally to reschedule his shifts. But everybody knew it was because he’d gotten into a fight with a giant lizard.”

Hal shook his head, still drawing a blank. “Was I off-planet?”

“I guess you may have been, but how did you not see that on the internet?” Oliver demanded. “There are Central Asian nomadic tribes that only have cell reception once a week, and they all watched Batman kick a bipedal alligator’s ass. You are honest to god the last person on the planet to know about this. I’d offer to show you, because it’s hilarious and awesome, but it’s kind of hard to watch now that I know he came out of it with a dislocated shoulder.”

Hal rubbed his forehead, and he heard Oliver rooting through his coat pockets, his second beer completely forgotten.

“Here.” 

A tablet plunked down on the desk in front of Hal, and Oliver enlarged the picture on the screen. Hal found himself staring at an image of what could only be Killer Croc looming over Bruce. He’d objectively known the supervillain was a heavyweight, but the knowledge had a different impact when it was presented like this. He loomed over Bruce like a fever-dream brought to life, jaws wide and claws as thick as a man’s finger ready to sink into Bruce’s chest.

“Some kid with a cell phone managed to get about forty seconds of footage. The Boy Scout was a little worried that the publicity was going to undermine the mystique, but seriously,” Oliver snorted. He scrolled through a few frames and paused on the one where Croc got close enough to grab Bruce. “This is basically B fighting something out of people’s worst nightmares, and…” Oliver skipped to another frame, this one showing Croc arching backwards in a shower of blue sparks. “...blasting it the hell out the other side of the alley.”

Hal swallowed and made a mental note to be very careful of the suit’s built-in defenses in the future. Oliver spread his hands and flopped back down in his chair, hooking one knee over the arm and stretching his other leg straight before wedging the makeshift ice-pack against his fly.

“Mind if I ask what else set this off?”

Hal looked up to find Oliver’s gaze resting on his face, his eyes sharp and his expression gentle. He grimaced and flipped the tablet over. He didn’t particularly need another reminder that Bruce could bleed this soon after thinking that Bruce might be dying on him.

“Does there need to be anything else?” he asked, irritated.

“Well, there doesn’t _need_ to be, no,” Oliver allowed. “But you showed up in uniform, with what I’m sincerely hoping is not your blood on your cast, and sat here for I don’t even want to know how long without losing any steam. So I’m kind of thinking there’s something else going on here.”

Hal grimaced as he remembered Bruce’s warning that Oliver was sharper than he got credit for being. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” Oliver glanced around the room, then raised his bottle. “You want to watch the Comets game I TiVoed and not talk about it, then? Because I have to say I’m completely down with not talking about anything else tonight.”

Hal closed his eyes and considered the invitation. He didn’t particularly want to be alone, but he wasn’t sure he was up to Oliver’s brand of not talking about things until he’d at least calmed down a little.

“Maybe some other night,” Hal said finally, getting to his feet. “I think I want to not talk about it by myself right now.”

Oliver shot him a quick mock-salute. “You’ve got my number if you change your mind.”

“Thanks for the beer, Ollie.” Hal opened the window and hooked one leg out it.

“No problem,” Oliver called after him. “And I’m serious--you want to pick up the phone, do it. The only thing I’ve got planned for the next twelve hours is seeing if my doctor can make sure my left nut isn’t actually somewhere north of my sternum.”

Hal took to the sky, grateful for the silence. The card with Bruce’s number was somewhere in his sock drawer, and he needed to think about exactly what he wanted to say before he called.


	13. Chapter 13

By morning, the pain in Hal’s arm had subsided to the usual dull ache, a dollop of ointment had soothed the scar cutting across his chest, and he still hadn’t been able to think of anything that sounded right in terms of reaching out to Bruce. “I may have overreacted, but you’re still a jerk” was pointless. “Call me” implied a level of forgiveness he didn’t quite feel. “We need to talk” made it sound like someone had cancer. He re-read the text he’d decided on--a short, simple “Can we talk?”--and hit send.

After that, it was a waiting game. He felt good enough to drag himself into work and let Tom tease him for a few hours about the bags under his eyes. When Tom tried to talk him into a bowl of chicken soup and a nap on the couch in Carol’s office, Hal gave up and spent the remainder of his eight hours alternately moping at and helping Carol.

“Do I want to know?” she asked.

“Life is hard,” Hal said. He’d been too wired to sleep and too tired to do anything else once he’d gotten home. Tom’s caretaking had somehow made him feel even worse than he already did about his silent phone. Carol was at least less inclined to mother him while he was on the clock.

“Bad night, huh?” Carol’s voice was muffled by the engine bay she was half-in. “Hand me a zip tie?”

“I feel like I’m aiding and abetting when you start using zip ties on engines,” Hal grumbled. “Does Tom know you’re doing this?”

“Tom asked me to do this, because my hands are smaller than his.” She waved her free hand imperiously, and Hal winced at the toll the job had taken on her manicure.

“Size?” he asked.

“Anything over six inches.”

Hal stopped with his hand on the bin of assorted plastic strips and sighed noisily.

“ _Really?_ ” he asked.

“Rimshot,” Carol snickered. “Yes, I know. Seriously, though.”

Hal pressed a few zip ties into her outstretched palm, then waited until she’d secured whatever she was tinkering with. She straightened up and wiped a smudge of grease off her forehead.

“And don’t give me that look,” she said firmly. “We just need the wires to stay out of his way while he’s working. Last time he caught one with a wrench, it took us ten non-billable hours and a lot of nail-biting to run down the short it caused. This model doesn’t have a cubic centimeter of spare room.” She scrubbed her hands on a rag and frowned at Hal. “While we’re commenting on each other’s choices, maybe you could stand to take it a little easier until that wing heals up?”

“That’s not…” Hal shook his head. “It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, it had nothing to do with my arm, and it’s only a few weeks until the cast comes off anyway.” 

“After which you’ve got a few weeks of PT,” Carol reminded him.

He wrinkled his nose. The physical therapy would be a breeze compared to trying to maneuver through life one-armed. He sighed, trying to find the right way to explain the problem without making Carol laugh at him. “It was personnel issues, you know?”

“Whatever I’m imagining right now, I can only assume it falls about five miles short of reality,” Carol snorted. “Personnel issues. Honestly, Hal.”

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably about five times more interesting than what happened,” Hal said. “And I’m probably going to want to borrow your workman’s comp handbook once I’m not too sleep-deprived to read it without falling asleep on it.”

“No such thing,” Carol chuckled. “I need a half a pack of NoDoz just to make it through the quarterly updates.”

She checked off a line on the prep list for the jet and hung the clipboard back on the rack containing its blueprints and a copy of the work order. After a few seconds of silence, she gave him a sharp look.

“This isn’t about the time I said you weren’t allowed to use a ladder propped on a table instead of an appropriately-sized extension ladder, is it? Because there’s no question whatsoever that’s against regs.”

“I still think there’s an exception in there somewhere for people who can make their own safety nets,” Hal protested. “But no, it’s not about that. Like I said, personnel problems.”

“If your safety nets were fool-proof, I wouldn’t have spent the last month feeding you,” Carol said.

Hal didn’t have an answer for that one. He distracted himself by checking his phone again, then shoved it back in his pocket sourly. Bruce could be a stubborn son of a bitch at times, but Hal had expected at least the courtesy of a “No.” if that was how it was going to be.

“Do you want company tonight?” she asked gently, catching his expression. “All kidding aside?”

“I think I just want to sulk in peace with a pizza and a beer,” Hal said. “Or at least not have any witnesses around when I leave embarrassing voicemails.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather save yourself the embarrassment and have somebody there to wrestle the phone away from you?” Carol sized him up. “I bet either one of us could take you now that you’ve basically got one hand tied behind your back. If we both came over, you definitely wouldn’t have to worry about breaking into someone’s secret headquarters to delete incriminating audio files.”

“Ha ha.” Hal made a face at her and rubbed the back of his neck. “That was _one time_.”

“One time that I caught you, or one time that you did it?” Carol asked, smirking.

Hal’s cheeks burned. It had been bad enough waking up hungover and queasy on a Sunday when he’d had plans for a hike with Jack’s kids and Jim. One of the other test pilots calling to ask how the boss-lady ex-girlfriend had taken his drunken voicemail marriage proposal had been like a bucket of ice water on top of that. None of it, however, had held a candle to Carol catching him in flagrante delicto. She’d walked into her kitchen at eight o’clock in the morning only to find him standing there, green-gilled and shaky and desperately trying to muffle her answering machine with a potholder while the offending message played at top volume. She’d have been within her rights to fire him on the spot. Instead she’d laughed so hard she hadn’t been able to stay on her feet and told him to go home. It had been, weirdly enough, the point at which they’d started to become real friends instead of just two people with a history.

“The one time I did it,” he said firmly. “And this time, the voicemail in question would be necessary. I just don’t necessarily need a peanut gallery hanging around while I leave it.”

“Just make sure you really need to leave it before you do,” Carol warned. “Because I can only assume whoever you’ll be calling has better security than a lazy golden retriever who can be bribed with a hotdog.”

Hal thought of Ollie’s appalling lack of anything approaching a real system and winced. “You’d be surprised.”

“Oh my god, Hal.” Carol rolled her eyes. “Worse than your security? Please tell me no. Lie to me, if you need to. Free pass, just this once, to tell me a blatant untruth to spare my delicate female sensibilities.”

Hal tried not to smile at her and failed. He’d just shoved the power battery behind his laundry hamper until she’d pointed out that that was a phenomenally stupid thing to do. She’d suggested a safe, and he’d pointed out that with his luck anyone robbing his apartment would just steal the whole thing. They’d compromised by hiding it in plain sight under his kitchen sink, under an empty bleach bottle with the bottom cut out of it.

“They all live on an invisible island in another dimension patrolled by immortal warrior-maidens from Mars who’ve been perfecting their fighting techniques since before this country was founded,” Hal said, keeping his expression as somber as he could.

“Thank you,” Carol said. “Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, but thank you.”

She wound up keeping him late to go over plans for a jet they were slated to receive just after his cast was due to came off. He’d gotten a second wind by then, but Tom insisted on driving him home anyway. Hal didn’t argue too hard over it; he hadn’t been looking forward to the monotonous drive back into town from the airfield.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow at eight. Drop a line if you can’t make it in,” Tom said as he pulled up to the curb outside Hal’s apartment building. He was half-obstructing the right lane, and another driver honked at him as they pulled around. Tom cheerfully flipped them off before turning back to Hal. “Try to get some sleep. Carol’s given me permission in advance to slip you decaf instead of real coffee if you’re still dead on your feet tomorrow.”

“I’ll be fine,” Hal promised, waving him off. “I’m not on duty tonight. And thanks for the ride, man. I appreciate it.”

“No problem!”

Tom pulled into traffic, and Hal caught a few bars of “Uptown Funk” from the car’s open windows as Tom turned the radio back on and cranked up the volume. Hal’s good humor vanished when he checked his phone and saw no new texts. As much as he’d been deflecting when he’d told Carol he wanted a quiet night at home, a pizza, beer, and an early bedtime didn’t sound half-bad. He called in the order and started walking; delivery from his favorite pizzeria was an arm and a leg, and they weren’t licensed to deliver alcohol anyway.

He was only halfway back to his apartment, the six-pack tucked under his good arm and the box balanced awkwardly across his cast, when he realized just how badly he’d miscalculated his chances of getting home without dropping his dinner, his beer, or both. Tom did most of his grocery shopping on foot or by bicycle, but Tom had the good sense to bring a backpack and saddlebags.

“Need a hand?”

Hal jerked around fast enough that he could feel the box sliding out of his grasp even before he saw it wobble. Bruce caught it easily, without seeming to register that he’d done it.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he murmured. 

Hal stared at him, unable to formulate a coherent question around the sight of Bruce standing in front of him, in street clothes, in his neighborhood. For some reason Hal couldn’t quite articulate now, he’d assumed Bruce would seem like something closer to a normal human being out of the armor. Even dressed as he was in the most unassuming and nondescript way possible, Hal couldn’t believe Bruce wasn’t drawing stares.

“What are you doing here?” he finally managed. He immediately regretted the way it came out as almost an accusation, but Bruce didn’t seem surprised.

“You wanted to talk,” Bruce reminded him. “I thought it might be better if we spoke in person. Is this a bad time?”

“You thought it might be better if we spoke in person, so you... flew all the way out here?” Hal adjusted his grip on the beer and started walking again. Bruce fell into step beside him. “And stalked me to a pizza place?”

“I was in the area when I got your text.”

Hal started to open his mouth.

“On other business,” Bruce clarified. “I took a train to Coast City when it was over.”

“A train.”

“Yes, a train. Yes, like a normal person,” Bruce said irritably. “I had a cab drop me at the City Center and walked from there. Running into you on the way was happenstance.”

“You had the cab drop you _three miles_ from my place,” Hal said. “As you do, when you’re a completely normal human being planning a visit to a friend.”

“It’s a nice night for a stroll, and I’m not going to risk compromising your safety just to save half an hour of walking,” Bruce countered.

“That’s kind of paranoid, even for you,” Hal pointed out. “It’s not like my neighbors are going to call the cops just because I have a guest.”

He sneaked another look at Bruce’s face under the dark baseball cap he was wearing and caught the flicker of surprise lighting Bruce’s blue eyes. It vanished behind the impenetrably calm, collected facade that Bruce had apparently perfected as a resting expression, and Hal wondered what it would take to get it back. Probably something along the lines of knocking the pizza out of Bruce’s hands and dragging him into an open-mouthed kiss right there on the sidewalk.

“The airport would have been closer,” Hal said instead.

“There’s no easy walking route back to the main thoroughfares. A lone pedestrian would have drawn attention.”

“You could have called,” Hal said. “What if I hadn’t been home?”

 

“I’d have called,” Bruce answered simply.

“What were you going to do, park yourself on my front stoop until I got home? That would be even more conspicuous than just taking a cab.” Hal laughed in spite of himself. “Not texting back was a dick move, though. What if my place is a pigsty?”

“There are several diners I could have waited at without drawing undue attention, I apologize, and I doubt either of your friends would have let your apartment get that bad given the current circumstances,” Bruce said.

“Please tell me you haven’t been spying on me,” Hal sighed. He gave Bruce an obvious once-over. “I mean, I’m reasonably sure I’d have noticed you loitering, but…” Hal frowned. “Did you just say you apologize?”

“Yes.”

Hal grinned at Bruce, waiting for a hint of evasiveness or hesitation. When he didn’t pick up on anything, he figured he might finally be getting a little punchy. “For not texting me back. You _apologize_ for not texting me back.”

“Yes, I apologize for not texting you back. I should have.” Bruce grimaced at him and nodded at the building’s front door. “And we should probably take this conversation inside.”

“Yeah, probably.” Hal let them in and led the way to the elevator. As tempting as he might find the thought of spending four flights of stairs memorizing what Bruce’s ass looked like in jeans, Hal was too tired to even think about taking them at the moment. He fumbled with his keys until Bruce wordlessly took the beer off him, after which he managed without embarrassing himself any further. The apartment, to his relief, wasn’t as messy as he’d feared he had left it. 

Bone-deep fatigue had a way of transubstantiating his ‘I should’s into ‘I did’s, and he’d woken up to find everything from packages of toaster waffles ruined from never making it back into the freezer to Carol’s number half-dialed and still blinking at him on his phone. Now, though, the laundry was off the floor, the kitchen table was clear, the power battery was away, the dirty dishes were in the sink, and the trash was all mercifully in the garbage. Hal watched Bruce’s eyes flick from one surface to another, silently taking the measure of the apartment. Hal thought of the batplane, with its mercilessly clean lines and complete lack of personal touches, and deflated. Wherever Bruce spent his time when he wasn’t lurking on rooftops or haunting Mount Justice, it probably made Hal’s apartment look like a superfund site in comparison.

Bruce arched an eyebrow and lifted the pizza box a fraction of an inch, the question obvious.

“Just leave it on the counter,” Hal said. He grabbed the beer and crammed it into the fridge.

“I haven’t been spying on you, in case that was a genuine allegation,” Bruce said blandly.

“You just, what, intuited that my friends have been cleaning up after me?” Hal asked. He pulled a pair of plates out of the cupboard and grabbed a roll of paper towels to use as napkins.

“A certain amount of predictive behavioral modeling may have been involved,” Bruce admitted. He’d put his hands in his pockets once he’d set the pizza down, and Hal rolled his eyes.

“Nothing in here is going to give you ebola if you touch it,” he promised. He flipped open the pizza box. The smell hit him like a blow, and he suddenly realized exactly how hungry he was. Hal shoved a plate into Bruce’s hands.

“Is that your way of inviting me to stay for dinner?” Bruce asked, looking down at the dish. 

Hal shot him a withering glare around the half a slice he’d just stuffed into his mouth and folded himself into a chair. He kicked the one opposite him away from the table and jerked his head at it. Bruce carefully slid a piece of pizza onto his plate and joined him.

“You asked if we could talk,” Bruce said quietly. “What about?”

Hal swallowed with some difficulty. He hadn’t really thought about what he’d say, and he could practically hear Oliver snickering and telling him this was why everyone had had a pre-game meeting without him. If he’d talked it over with Carol or Tom instead of pouting most of the day, he wouldn’t be blanking now.

“What did your doctor say?” he finally mumbled. He started on another mouthful as a delaying tactic. There was a stiffness to Bruce’s posture that made him think he wasn’t going to even try the pizza unless Hal made him, and Hal tried to imagine what was going on behind that handsome mask of a face. Nobody spent god only knew how long on a train, paid god only knew how much for a cab, and then walked three miles in the hope of talking to someone only to sit there like a statue the whole night.

“That I’m fine, scalp laceration aside,” Bruce said, his brows furrowing slightly. “You could have just as easily texted me for that.”

Hal snorted. “That you’re fine? That’s the story you’re going with, here? I thought you were dying on me--”

“You were mistaken,” Bruce snapped.

“--and you’re going with ‘I’m fine.’?”

Bruce leaned back and crossed his arms, and his eyes narrowed. “She said that there’s nothing _physically_ wrong with me. Happy?”

Hal chewed for a few seconds before the implication hit him. He tossed the crust onto his plate and wiped his mouth on a paper towel.

“Just so we’re clear,” Hal said slowly, “your doctor did a full work-up after you came in complaining of, what, being struck by a bolt of supervillain lair-lightning and thrown across the room? And she basically suggested you see a shrink.”

“No, of course not,” Bruce told him. “She said I needed a shrink. She hasn’t suggested that I see one since the last referral she tried to give me turned out to be--”

“If you say a supervillain, I’m going to have to officially request that the EPA open an investigation into what the hell’s wrong with your city,” Hal sighed. “I’m not even joking at this point.”

Bruce glared at him. “A cultist.”

“So, the EPA…” Hal began.

“There was no involvement of metahumans, aliens, or magic,” Bruce said firmly. “He might as well have been a Scientologist. It was simply an unfortunate recommendation.”

“That would happen in precisely zero other cities on the planet,” Hal retorted.

“Los Angeles springs to mind.” Bruce frowned. “Metropolis has had a few cases as well, though those were external in origin.”

“Whatever. Back to the part where your doctor has a sense of humor,” Hal persisted. “I guess she’d have to, huh?” He wondered what she’d said when she’d had to reset Bruce’s shoulder after a giant lizard had dislocated it. Hal got himself another slice of pizza and refrained from asking. “Eat. Martinelli’s does the best pies on this coast.” 

Bruce picked the slice up gingerly, folded it in half, and took a bite. Hal slid his elbows off the table self-consciously and tried to remember if he’d even been chewing with his mouth closed the whole time. It was the sort of thing that usually had Oliver laughing and saying he couldn’t take Hal anywhere, which was fine because most of the time they were at Oliver’s house, and Hal had the excuse of being just off a mission, and Wally was putting them both to shame anyway. 

But now he was sitting across the table from Bruce, who cleaned up after himself and didn’t eat junk food and had never remarked directly on Hal’s habits before, but then again, they’d never done _this_ before, had they? Not that Hal knew exactly what _this_ was. He’d barely expected Bruce to call him back, once noon had come and gone with no response.

“Why didn’t you tell me you basically gave everyone the finger about having that meeting without me?” Hal asked after a few seconds. “You know, while I was giving you ten kinds of shit about it for what it turns out were kind of specious reasons. Because now I kind of feel like an asshole, and I probably kind of sounded like an asshole while I was doing it, and I kind of like to avoid going off half-cocked where I can possibly avoid it.”

Bruce glanced up at that, and there was something cold and hard in his eyes that gave Hal pause. Then Bruce dropped his gaze back to the food and wiped his hands.

“You’ll forgive me if knowing something was wrong and doing it anyway didn’t strike me as a particularly good defense,” he said.

Hal stared at him for a few seconds before bursting into laughter. Bruce’s head snapped up, and the utter bewilderment on his face made Hal laugh even harder.

“Oh my god, that is such a _you_ way of thinking about it,” he gasped. “Oh no, you didn’t throw yourself onto a pyre rather than admit defeat. The shame of it.”

Bruce watched him, bemused, for another few seconds before answering. “You seemed to be in a marginally less understanding mood not too long ago.”

“Yeah, well. That’s where it helps to know that my friends weren’t all tripping over themselves to ditch me,” Hal said. He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry I laughed. That was…” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have. But in the future, if I’m, I don’t know, yelling at you for being ten minutes late to a meeting and it’s because you were saving a bus full of nuns and orphans, will you please just _tell_ me? I guarantee we’ll be fighting about something legitimate soon enough. Fighting about the wrong thing is kind of stupid.”

Bruce face softened as he looked away, and Hal figured that was as close as he was going to get to an ‘okay’ from him. 

“So what was it that you wanted to discuss?” Bruce asked again.

“That was pretty much it,” Hal said. “I’d like to not find out from Oliver that I owe you ten percent of an apology. I mean, I don’t really like apologizing, and Oliver never lets me live it down. If I’d thought you were going to come all the way out here instead of just calling me back like a sane person--which now that I say it out loud, I feel like I should have at least half-expected you to do something like this--I’d have made conversation-topic flashcards or something.” He shot Bruce a crooked smile, feeling foolish as the awkward silence stretched out around them. “So, you have any interesting cases lately?”

Bruce tilted his head, and Hal was a little surprised by how much less tense Bruce suddenly seemed.

“Have I had any interesting cases lately,” Bruce echoed, and Hal wondered if he was imagining the beginning of an answering smile on Bruce’s lips. He wondered if Bruce would mind if he kissed him. Not that Bruce had seemed to mind before, but Bruce had had the mask before. Hal could sense the difference, even if he couldn’t explain it.

“You know what I mean,” Hal said, waving his hand and trying not to blush. “Solo cases. Stuff that hasn’t made the papers.”

“There was an art heist,” Bruce offered. He took a bite of his pizza, and Hal tried not to laugh again.

“You don’t say,” he scoffed. “An art heist at the Gotham Museum. Do the papers even bother reporting those anymore?”

“The Gould Gallery for Contemporary Art,” Bruce corrected. “They have better security since the building is newer, and they’re a less attractive target since they deal primarily with modern art.”

“Because it’s junk?” Hal asked, grinning at him.

“Because the prices are lower and the artists are generally still alive and active,” Bruce said evenly. “A lost piece is more easily duplicated while retaining authenticity. In any case, it turned out to not exactly be an art heist.”

Hal got up and headed for the fridge. “You want anything?” 

“Just water, thanks.”

Hal had wanted a beer, but then he glanced over his shoulder and caught Bruce watching him, and suddenly the idea of falling asleep on the couch in ten minutes didn’t seem quite as appealing. He poured a glass of iced tea instead. “If it wasn’t exactly an art heist, what was it?”

“Possibly, conceivably some sort of fraud.” Bruce shrugged. “Art experts are still arguing over it.”

“I’m not so sure I want to know anymore,” Hal confessed.

“There was a piece that revolved around a stuffed moose wearing a saddle and standing in front of a parking meter,” Bruce explained. “The issue, it turned out, was that the taxidermy was substandard, and the moose was disintegrating. For reasons I’m very sure you don’t want to know, the asking price had been driven up to five million dollars.”

“Five million dollars,” Hal said flatly, “for a disintegrating moose.”

“No.” Bruce sipped his water. “Hence the artist and the owner coming up with the brilliant plan to get another moose, stuff it correctly this time, and hire the McElroy gang to swap it out for the one that was falling apart.”

“And the McElroy gang is…?” Hal couldn’t remember hearing the name before.

“An extended family of mid- to high-end art thieves.”

“Are they the ones with the card theme?” Hal asked. He recalled vaguely ignoring Wally’s complaints about a bunch of thieves using a card motif the last time they’d all gotten together for poker night. It had been prompted by Oliver’s hand, he thought. “The Royal Flush Gang?”

“No. The McElroys don’t have a theme.” Bruce gave him a long-suffering look. “They’re just art thieves.”

“Art thieves who took a job to not-really steal a moose,” Hal countered. “Aren’t moose huge? Tom’s family raised an orphaned calf one year, and I swear from the pictures it was the size of a Saint Bernard before it was off the bottle.”

“Moose are enormous,” Bruce agreed. “It took the entire family, and they still had to bribe three guards to help them get it in through the loading bay. I think they took the job more for the novelty than the profit margins.”

“And you just let them do it?” Hal asked. He could imagine Bruce, crouched in the rafters watching the bizarre operation play out below and waiting for someone to commit a genuine crime. “That seems a little non-interventionist for you.”

Bruce shrugged again, and Hal couldn’t tell if his expression was more exasperated or amused. 

“What was there to intervene over? They didn’t even break and enter. The work was done either by or under the supervision of the original artist, and the piece remained essentially unchanged. I passed the information along to the police in case the McElroys decided to get clever about anything, but the commissioner’s response wasn’t particularly enthusiastic.”

“He asked you if you’d run out of fare jumpers to harass, didn’t he?” Hal rocked back in his chair. “So you spent a few days tracking a completely normal gang of art thieves, because Gotham is a completely normal city with a completely normal criminal yellow pages?”

“Any decently-sized city has criminals who specialize,” Bruce protested. “They’re entrepreneurs, unfortunately.”

“Oh yeah? How many art-stealing co-ops does Coast City have?” Hal challenged.

“Three.”

Hal stared at him, teetering between being impressed that Bruce had an immediate and firm answer to the question and being annoyed at his inability to ever let anything go. Then he gave up on figuring it out, leaned across the table, and kissed him.

There was a brief, weightless moment where Hal thought he’d misjudged the situation and that Bruce wasn’t going to kiss him back. Then Bruce opened his mouth, and Hal felt Bruce’s fingers gently cupping the back of his neck. Hal almost gasped at the unadulterated need coursing through him, and he had Bruce on his feet and crowded against the wall before he could second-guess himself. Hal slid his left hand up Bruce’s back, burrowing under the shirt to feel the skin beneath, and Bruce shivered and went still.

Hal paused and let his gaze sweep over Bruce’s face, still wary of the newness of being able to really touch him. The blue eyes that had surprised him the night before were dark and hungry. Hal flexed his hand against Bruce’s spine and watched as Bruce’s breath visibly caught, his chest tightening at the contact.

“Is this okay?” Hal asked softly. 

Bruce closed his eyes and laughed, then stripped off his shirt and guided Hal’s hand slowly up his chest before kissing his palm. “What do you think?”

“I think I’ve got a box of condoms in my medicine cabinet, and I think we don’t have to worry about anyone busting in on us for at least twelve hours,” Hal said, trying to keep his voice level. He also thought that Carol would forgive him for going AWOL for the rest of the week if he spent it cataloging every square inch of Bruce’s skin, and that if his cock got any harder than it already was, he’d be able to cut glass with it.

Then Bruce was unbuttoning his shirt and easing it off him with a practiced care, and Bruce’s hands were skimming his ribs and shoulders and ass in a way that made it feel like foreplay instead of a chore, and Bruce was leaning back against the wall and grabbing Hal’s hips and pulling him roughly against his chest and kissing him hard, and Hal wanted nothing more than to have Bruce stretched out naked on his bed so they could do this properly. He twisted out of Bruce’s arms and tugged him toward the bedroom.

It wasn’t until Hal was sinking onto Bruce’s cock and watching Bruce’s face contort with pleasure that it clicked for him that this was really happening. He wasn’t dreaming. Bruce’s fingers were digging into his thighs, one hand gripping less surely because it was still slick with the lube he’d used to work Hal open. Bruce’s eyes were drinking him in, angry red scar and all, and couldn’t seem to settle on any one point in their eagerness to focus on all of him at once. Hal’s cock was still damp with Bruce’s spit and aching for Bruce’s mouth. Bruce thrust upward gently, slowly, rocking into him, and Hal groaned in spite of himself and wished he’d do it again. Barely a day ago Hal had been panicking because he’d thought Bruce was dying on him, less than ten hours ago he’d been fuming because he thought Bruce was ignoring him, and now Bruce was a few minutes away from fucking him senseless. He rocked back and wrapped his left hand around Bruce’s bent knee to steady himself, and Bruce’s hands moved to his waist to give him more support.

“I need you to do two things for me,” Hal gritted, watching Bruce’s muscles ripple under his skin.

“Name them,” Bruce said simply.

“Fuck me hard, and don’t judge me if I come in two seconds flat.”

Bruce’s head fell back on the pillow, and his attempts not to laugh sent a pleasant buzz coiling up Hal’s spine.

“Ready?” Bruce asked, his fingertips running over Hal’s hips.

“Any time now,” Hal snorted, rocking back.

Bruce’s eyes narrowed, a mixture of lust and mischief coloring his features, and Hal groaned when a well-aimed thrust pressed firmly against his prostate. Two seconds might be pushing it, he thought.

Hal was almost proud of himself when, five minutes later, he was still clinging to the edge of his climax in spite of Bruce’s best efforts. He was hanging on to Bruce’s shoulder, barely conscious of Bruce’s hands braced against his ribs to take the stress off his good arm, and losing himself in wave after wave of pure animal bliss pulsing through his veins. He should have known it was Bruce’s version of a warm-up, and a minute later Hal was panting and moaning and spilling across Bruce’s belly. He at least had the satisfaction of dragging Bruce along with him, and the sated flush that spread over Bruce’s face in the few moments immediately after he came would have been worth it all on its own.

Hal collapsed slowly onto Bruce’s chest, angling his cast out of the way and wedging his face into Bruce’s throat. Bruce was warm and solid, and he wrapped his arms loosely around Hal once he’d settled.

“You should stay the night,” Hal mumbled, his words slurring together as he tried to talk directly into Bruce’s skin. He let the feeling of Bruce’s heartbeat against his chest lull him to the sort of deep and dreamless sleep that had been eluding him since he’d been benched.


	14. Chapter 14

Bruce yawned and tried to focus on the agenda for the afternoon board meeting instead of resenting it for cheating him out of an extra few hours in Hal’s bed. It didn’t help that he could still practically feel Hal’s broad chest curled against his back. Comfortable as it was, the corporate jet’s seat was a poor substitute. He rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. The pilot was running through her scripted patter about appreciating it if everyone could keep their seatbelts on until they’d reached cruising altitude, and, across the broad aisle from him, Wendy was trying to stifle a sympathetic yawn. 

She looked impeccably put together, as always, and she was an old hand at covering jetlag with espresso shots. Her viciously cheerful “I hope she was worth it” had been the only indication that she disapproved of their delayed departure. He’d wanted to correct her, to be honest about that much at least, but he’d recognized it as a petty impulse a moment later. Hal’s ruinous lack of attention to security was one thing; Bruce not taking what few steps he could to shield Hal from additional scrutiny was quite another.

“Do you have an updated itinerary?” Bruce asked. It was an unnecessary question, and he knew it. Wendy had been Lucius’s PA before he’d assigned her to Bruce, presumably on the theory that her fanatical attention to detail might begin to make up for Bruce’s glaring and numerous shortcomings as an executive. She’d undoubtedly had an updated itinerary ready the moment the security gate guard she’d bribed had called to tell her Bruce was on his way.

She handed it over wordlessly, and he suppressed a smile at the handwritten, twice-underlined “SHOWER” inserted in the two hours between touch-down and the meeting. Hal’s scent still clung to him, but he doubted anyone except Wendy would have noticed at that distance. She hadn’t needed to add the reminder, though. While Bruce was personally in no hurry to scrub it away, even under normal circumstances it wouldn’t do to slink into a board meeting wearing yesterday’s suit and smelling like last night’s partner.

As it was, if Kord Industries wound up needing the bailout he thought they would, Bruce would need a few months of good behavior under his belt to make it happen. Nothing suspicious, and nothing spectacular, but at the very least a solid stretch of showing up on time, being attentive, not bringing any inappropriate guests, and acting like a professional during business hours. 

He’d already done as much with the tour of the new shipping facility, though he hadn’t expected it to be so difficult when he’d scheduled it. Sandwiched as it had been between Leslie’s calm, efficient, and absolutely brutal dressing-down and what he’d fully expected to be Hal telling him they were done, the four-hour walking tour of the new Wayne Enterprises campus had been a surreal experience. He’d made it through without letting his game-face slip. Between the cards he’d collected, Wendy’s detailed notes, and the helpfully-captioned PR photos that would be appearing in the next company newsletter, he was sure he could parrot back all the talking points he’d heard well enough to satisfy the three board members who liked him least that he’d been paying attention.

Bruce rubbed his eyes. The evening that had followed hadn’t been much less strange. 

Hal had been understandably furious about the unannounced discussion, and while Bruce refused to feel guilty about voting to protect Hal’s interests over Hal’s impulses, there was no avoiding the fact that he’d known damn well it was unethical to be having the vote in the first place. 

If it had been anyone but Wally, so desperate to put the brakes on another fight that he’d apologized for making jokes about the ‘Hospital BJ Incident’ and begged Bruce to stay, Bruce was sure he’d have kept walking. He _should_ have kept walking, regardless. There was no getting around it. Going back had been another moment of weakness, this one prompted by the misery of the one person he knew whose faith in humanity never seemed to flag. But Bruce had gone back. He’d been an active participant. He’d voted in the way Hal was most likely to see as an additional betrayal. The only thing he hadn’t done was compound everything by lying about it when Hal had been sitting in front of him, fretting about taking the blame for a fouled-up recon mission. 

So it wasn’t as if Bruce hadn’t had it coming when Hal had told him to go fuck himself. There had even been, if Bruce was being honest with himself, an unpleasant little part of his brain that had found it gratifying to not be the only one Hal argued with. If Hal could get into a screaming match with Diana and Clark, two of the finest people Bruce had ever met, then perhaps that was just how Hal occasionally dealt with things and not some unflattering reflection on his opinion of Bruce in particular. He’d more than earned Hal’s anger. But then had come the text, and the sudden, awful realization that the vote had been the last straw, and the grim trek to Coast City to at least handle _that_ part of their relationship correctly.

Instead Hal had tried to feed him, and had wanted to offer ten percent of an apology, whatever that meant, and had slept with him. Things had been as normal between them as they ever were, with Hal bristling at any perceived slight to his lifestyle, being a goodnatured gadfly about Gotham’s social issues, and demanding that Bruce talk shop. Hal had fallen into bed with Bruce without hesitation and been so comfortable with him there that he’d been snoring into Bruce’s shoulder before Bruce had even pulled out of him. It had turned into a date, or something like it.

The only grit in the gears was the fact that Hal clearly hadn’t connected the dots between his name and his face. It wasn’t entirely surprising, now that he’d had time to think about it. The particular glee with which the Gotham rags reported on his exploits wasn’t shared by the national press, and Wayne Enterprises’ PR team spent their spare time making sure international business reporters either ignored his personal life or at least discussed it in circumspect terms. Given the time Hal spent off-planet and his general disinterest in celebrity gossip, it would have been very easy for him to miss the occasional picture of Bruce shaking hands with someone important or winding up with someone famous in his lap at a club that made a front page outside the tri-state area.

Bruce realized he’d been reading the same page for at least five minutes and thought that might be pushing it even for Wendy’s low expectations of him. He shuffled the resume of the new vice president of research and development to the fore and pretended to read that instead. They’d be confirming her during the second half of the meeting. He’d already done his customary, somewhat excessive background check on his own time, and she’d come back as clean as a person could expect to while still having the political chops to claw her way to the top of a competitive department in a large corporation. That qualification having been met, there was no way Bruce was going to publicly object to Lucius’s personal pick for the slot.

Wendy’s shoulders softened, and she grew more absorbed in her own stack of research, apparently satisfied that he was at least attempting to make himself useful.

Bruce picked at the edge of the resume and tried not to feel grateful that Hal hadn’t recognized him. Playing the libertine had its uses, playing the idiot doubly so. And the whole point of cultivating the sort of persona that would serve as a prophylactic against suspicion was to be widely seen and understood as _being_ that persona. It was all for nothing if only a handful of people knew about it and the rest of the city might find him credible as a vigilante. The logic of it was impeccable, and it had kept what little he had left in terms of family and friends safe. But Bruce still found it difficult not to fret at Clark’s disapproving looks or Alfred’s wounded pride. 

Alfred had at least accepted it as necessary, even if he didn’t like what it meant for the Wayne legacy. He could ignore local pundits accusing Bruce of ruining his parents’ good name so long as he was sure Batman was accomplishing something more worthwhile than Bruce could have as himself. His reproofs focused on moments when he thought the drunken playboy act was generating collateral damage. Bruce still felt a cold prickle of dread run down his spine when he remembered the sharp snap of a newspaper striking the breakfast table, the pixelated upskirt photo of Bruce’s date having made page one, above the fold, of the _Gotham Tattler_. Bruce had been new to it then, hadn’t understood what the photographer was up to, hadn’t gotten out of the limo first, hadn’t moved to block the shot, hadn’t expected it to make it to print. The last time he’d seen Alfred as wordlessly livid with his behavior was the first time he’d been expelled from boarding school. Bruce had been infinitely more careful since then. 

Clark, on the other hand, could still find the energy to ask if it all wasn’t just a bit much, if he wouldn’t be better off toning it down, if he couldn’t try being more respectable, if it wouldn’t be easier to just pretend he’d gone abroad again. By the time Bruce had been tempted to take that route, Lucius had had him neck-deep in Foundation fundraising, Commissioner Gordon had been agitating for effective internal oversight committees in the city’s largest companies, and Harvey Dent had been fighting a hard reelection campaign against a mob-backed newcomer. Batman was worse than useless in the political arena, and Bruce could hardly live up to the social responsibilities that had somehow stacked up in spite of his best efforts if he was faking calls from some nebulous foreign port of call in front of a green screen in the cave.

And if Clark was occasionally provoked into asking if the weather wasn’t just a bit cold to be drunkenly falling off yachts into Gotham Harbor, Bruce didn’t like his chances with Hal’s probable reaction. 

Whatever else Hal might be, he was a self-made man. Where other people with Hal’s level of natural talent might have coasted on that, Hal had worked his ass off to be the best he was capable of becoming. It wasn’t enough for him to win; Hal wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d given something everything he had. Bruce thought it was probably what made him such good friends with Oliver: for all the man’s partying, Oliver was never doing anything but exactly what he wanted, to the utmost degree of which he was capable. When Oliver had a drink in both hands, a girl on both arms, and a crowd of people listening to his latest stupid story, it was because there was nowhere else he’d rather be and nothing else he’d rather be doing.

Bruce approached the same situation as something to be endured in the service of misdirection and intelligence-gathering. His public face was a wasteful, feckless caricature of a cover for Batman’s espionage work. Seen for what it was, Bruce thought the odds of Hal looking on it favorably were... poor. Bruce swapped out the resume he wasn’t reading for a shareholder report he’d memorized before it had gone to print. 

Even his best didn’t impress Hal, not really. It was, he had to admit, part of Hal’s appeal. The man was a constant challenge to do more, to do it better, to _be_ better. He smiled softly at the memory of Hal bringing that same attitude with him into the bedroom. 

“Any time now,” he’d said, and he’d meant it.

But if it had taken Hal a while to consider him something more than just a man in a bat costume, Bruce could only imagine what he’d think of Bruce when he was just a man in a rich man’s costume. The warmth of the memory faded. Clark’s disappointment would be nothing compared to Hal’s contempt. Bruce discarded the shareholder report. Things would be so much simpler if the two of them could just continue as they were.

All the same, it was difficult to predict when a news-cycle would ebb and he’d suddenly prove interesting enough to grace the cover of something. Hal had a life. He had a job he loved, a wide social circle, friends who were as close as family, and enough blood relatives to fill a small bus. His responsibilities to Oa meant that he couldn’t always be on-planet to look after them, either. Bruce thought of the times Clark had asked him to keep an eye on Lois, just in case, while Clark had been off running down the source of some alien distress call. 

It had never come to much, of course. The only time she’d genuinely needed his help had been before he and Clark had properly met. Lois had been taking care of herself long before Clark had decided to play big-city reporter, and as Superman’s presence made it increasingly difficult for open corruption to find a home in the Metropolis PD, Luthor had grown more circumspect. Even with the added attention from being associated with Superman, Lois was safer now than she had been as the only real thorn in Luthor’s side. But Green Lantern had enemies that Hal’s friends would have no idea how to deal with, and Hal wasn’t as careful as he could be, and all it took was one underemployed reporter trying to be the first with an expose on Bruce Wayne’s gay affair to trip over something best left buried. 

There was no harm done if this was a one-time thing. Bruce had been as cautious as possible during the visit. But if Hal expected last night to be a first step toward some semblance of a normal relationship, he deserved to know the risk he’d be running just by being seen with Bruce.

Bruce rubbed his eyes, tossed the packet aside, and reclined his seat. Wendy made a disapproving noise, and he pretended not to have heard.

“Wake me when we’re over Metropolis?” he asked.

“Of course, Mr. Wayne,” she sighed.

He’d sleep on it. There was no point in, as Wally liked to put it, developing contingency plans for contingency plans. Not when Hal had a peculiar way of undermining Bruce’s expectations. They’d discuss it when he saw Hal again and see where it went from there.

* * *

Hal groped for his alarm blearily, slapping at where it should have been in the hopes that it would stop beeping at him. His bed still smelled like sex, and Bruce, and he just wanted to burrow further into the covers and forget the rest of the world for another few minutes. He finally woke up enough to realize that someone had moved it just out of arm’s reach, and that he’d have to get up to silence it. When he mustered the strength to get his feet on the floor and turn the damned thing off, he found a note taped to it.

Bruce’s even, jagged handwriting covered the back of his pizza receipt. “No rest for the wicked, still couldn’t bring myself to wake you before I had to.” It was signed with a large, swooping B.

“Cute,” Hal sighed. He frowned after a moment as his tired brain tripped over itself trying to reconstruct the previous night. 

He was more or less clean. He couldn’t recall much past coming all over Bruce’s stomach, but Hal knew damn well he hadn’t sleep-walked into the bathroom to wipe himself down. He’d been carefully tucked in before he’d lurched off the mattress like a zombie, a far cry from his normal morning state of hopelessly tangled in one sheet with all the blankets kicked half off the bed. And he’d been on one of side of the bed instead of sprawled across the whole thing, which was how he tended to sleep when he was alone. 

So Bruce had cleaned them both up, stayed for at least a little while, and then... set his alarm for seven?

A burble from the coffee maker made him realize that he could smell fresh coffee over everything else.

Hal pulled on a pair of boxers and padded toward the kitchen. The timer function he’d never managed to get working was blinking at him, because of course it was.

So Bruce had cleaned them both up, stayed for at least a little while, and then, on his way out, set Hal’s alarm for the proper time and his coffee maker to finish right as Hal would be trying to find the snooze button. If he’d needed any additional evidence that he’d fucked Batman the night before, he couldn’t think of what it would be.

Hal dumped the sugar and milk right into the pot, texted Tom and Carol to let them know he was taking a vacation day, and crawled back into bed. It wasn’t even exactly that he was still tired. He was sleep-blurred and under-caffeinated, but he’d slept like the dead for at least eight hours. Hal buried his face in a pillow and closed his eyes. If Bruce had stayed, he was sure he’d already be climbing back on top of him. Hal’s cock was hard again just from the memory of it, and he flopped onto his back and took himself in hand. If he’d been in a little bit less of a hurry last night, he’d have taken the time to find out what Bruce sounded like when his cock was being sucked. Hal let his mind linger over the way Bruce’s hips had flexed and his stomach had tightened as he’d hit Hal’s prostate over and over again, and he came in his fist with a sharp groan.

Hal wiped his hand on a kleenex and sighed, contented. It was strange that he’d never considered the sexual ramifications of Bruce being completely incapable of backing down from a challenge. If Hal had had the good sense to text Bruce on a day when he hadn’t been dog tired, they probably would have fucked all night.

Hal stretched and yawned, savoring the fading ache in his muscles. It felt like it had been forever since he’d woken to the sort of tightness that could be cured with nothing more than a good stretch and a quick jog. He wondered if Bruce was feeling it now, too. Maybe Bruce was asleep again, wedged in the back corner of some passenger car where he wouldn’t be noticed or disturbed. Hal frowned at the thought as the coffee started to kick in. The train didn’t quite make sense. Bruce had never been a man to waste time if he could help it, and there was no way he’d gotten to Coast City from Gotham by train in that amount of time.

Hal had his laptop out and booting up before he really registered what he was doing. Bruce was hardly the only one in the League who could use his brain when the need arose. Hal pulled up the schedule for the previous day’s commuter trains. If Bruce had gotten to the City Center a half hour before they’d met, and he’d gotten a cab there from the train station, then he’d have arrived around the same time as the Santa Marta line had been making its first afternoon stop. Hal traced the stops back from there. Half of them had airfields, but they were mostly smaller affairs catering to commuter jets and small private planes. Bruce wouldn’t have used the batplane. It was too conspicuous for anything but costumed work. But a smaller cargo plane would go unnoticed practically anywhere along the route Bruce had taken, and Bruce was a serviceable enough pilot that he wouldn’t raise any eyebrows flying into any of those airstrips.

Hal paused with the coffee pot halfway to his lips. He’d been overthinking it. Bruce’s habit of considering things from every conceivable angle was rubbing off on him. Bruce was a pilot. A damn good one for a civilian, if Hal was being honest. Definitely an experienced one. He’d be certified, if he was flying a normal plane as a normal person. All Hal had to do was get his hands on a list of pilots named Bruce in the appropriate demographic operating out of the Gotham area. It wasn’t even that far off from how he was sure Bruce had gotten _his_ information, after they’d first met.

Or, Hal thought, he could just ask.

He snorted to himself and closed the laptop. The Santa Marta line didn’t start back up until six-thirty. Assuming Bruce had caught the first available train back to wherever the hell he was flying out of, he’d stayed until at least five. Bruce, whose idea of personal space seemed to involve miles instead of inches, had slept in his bed. Bruce, who had to be carefully herded into conversations, had sat at his table and told him about a case just because he’d asked. Bruce, whose favored exit strategy was mysterious disappearances, had left him a stupid note and set his coffee maker for him. Asking didn’t seem as ridiculous as it might have back when Bruce had been growling at him and stalking around the Fortress of Solitude because Hal knew his first name. Hal smiled and buried his face in the pillow Bruce had used.

Hal groaned at the sound of a soft knock on the door. His eyes went to the clock, and he shook himself fully awake. He’d been drifting back to sleep, he thought. His brain was pleasantly fogged and his limbs were just this side of heavy, and when he’d closed his eyes he could imagine Bruce was still in bed with him. Hal hoisted himself out of bed and into the living room just in time to find Tom letting himself in, a grocery bag balanced awkwardly on one hip.

Tom stared at him for a second, then blushed. 

“ _Shit_. Sorry, man, I figured you might want some breakfast. I was already in the neighborhood when I got your message.” He deposited the bag on the table and then beat a hasty retreat. “Just pretend I wasn’t here, have fun--”

“What?” Hal looked around, at a loss. He knew he wasn’t firing on all cylinders yet, but he couldn’t come up with an explanation for Tom’s tone.

Tom rolled his eyes and lowered his voice. “If I’d known you were calling out laid, I’d have left the bag on the mat and texted you. I didn’t know I was buying for two, so you’ll have to split the apple fritter.”

“I didn’t... I’m not... how did you even…” Hal rubbed his eyes and tried to start over. “He already left, you can stop acting like you walked in on something.”

“Oh.” Tom relaxed. “Still. Sorry about that. I just assumed you were under the weather when you said you weren’t coming in.”

“How do you know I’m not?” Hal asked defensively, opening the bag. The promised apple fritter was in a small pastry box balanced on top of everything else. He tore it open and bit into the pastry gratefully.

“You’re _glowing_ ,” Tom said, spreading his hands. Hal glanced at his ring, alarmed. “Hormones, not powers. You either had a sex-guest and a really, really good time, or you just spent like an hour holding a new baby Jordan. And let’s face it, your sister-in-law isn’t leaving the kids with you until you put U-locks on the cabinets.”

“Yeah, well,” Hal mumbled. He could feel his cheeks turning red.

“Got your ‘personnel issues’ all sorted out then?” Tom asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Those were two completely separate things, and don’t you and Carol have anything to talk about that isn’t my personal life?” Hal sighed.

Tom laughed to himself and started unpacking the rest of the bag. A loaf of bread, a jug of almond milk, a pile of fruit, and cold cuts were whisked into the fridge before Hal could even thank him.

“You really didn’t have to do this,” Hal said. Granted, he hadn’t been the best about shopping lately. Aside from the leftover pizza, he was mostly down to frozen dinners and canned soup. It wasn’t like he was going to starve, though; his legs still worked fine and there were three bodegas within two blocks of his apartment.

“Yeah, but I really wasn’t kidding about yesterday,” Tom retorted brightly. “You looked like death warmed over. I’d have knocked louder, but I didn’t want to wake you if you’d gone back to sleep. I figured you could use something fresh and easy to prepare, just in case you needed a few days of downtime.”

“And the apple fritter?” Hal asked.

“Was a bribe in case you decided that you’re a strong, independent hero who doesn’t need any care packages,” Tom said. “And Carol and I have plenty to talk about that’s not your personal life, except for the thing where we’re part of your personal life, at which point it’s sort of difficult to avoid.” Tom’s eyes darted around the apartment, taking in the trail of yesterday’s clothes leading to the bedroom. “So, does this mean you’re for-real seeing this guy? Do we get to drop the kind-of when we’re gossiping about your boyfriend?”

“Jesus, Tom,” Hal laughed. He put his hands over his face, then dropped his right when the cast’s edge grazed his cheek. “Maybe.”

“He gonna be your plus-one at Tegra’s graduation party?” Tom asked, grinning.

“Tegra’s graduation…?” Hal echoed. “Seriously? She’s done?”

“Yup.” Tom beamed at him. “Ferris Aircraft can officially no longer afford her. Well, as of the third week of May, we’ll officially no longer be able to afford her.”

“No chance of getting a friends-and-family discount, huh?” Hal snorted.

“We’ll see.” Tom shrugged. “She’s hellbent on moving back home as soon her contract with Carol’s up. She wants to wire the whole town for solar, start working on more efficient heating systems for winter, whole nine yards. Grandpa Joe’s proud as can be, Aunt Kari’s having kittens about her not living up to her potential, my mom’s calling every other day to see if I can talk her into staying because she wants to stop hearing about it from Aunt Kari.”

Hal thought about the occasional call from Jack that was more about talking some sense into Jim than anything else and shook his head. “Sounds about right. When’s the party?”

“Next Friday. I’ve got a trunk full of decorations, and…” Tom checked his watch. “...maybe another half-hour to get them into Carol’s office if I don’t want Tegra to catch me doing it. It’s a surprise, in case I didn’t mention.”

“You didn’t,” Hal said. “Good luck with that. You’re terrible at keeping secrets.”

“I’m awesome at keeping secrets. You and Carol just have some sort of weird sixth sense, and Tegra doesn’t count because we grew up practically being twins, so she knows literally every tell I have,” Tom sighed. “I’m going to just not think about it for the next ten days or something. Maybe hypnotize myself. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, for sure. Try not to laugh too hard when you tell Carol about this?” Hal asked.

“I will _try_ ,” Tom promised, “but I don’t know how much success I’m likely to have.”

Hal shook his head and yawned. “Thanks for the food. Drop by after work if you’re free. We can eat it while you watch whatever incomprehensible reality-tv show is hot right now and I see if Carol’s workman’s comp stuff has some solutions to my actual personnel issues.”

“It’s a date,” Tom told him, waving as he slipped out the door.

Hal finished the fritter and looked around the apartment, suddenly restless. He’d gotten a full night’s sleep. He’d eaten breakfast. He wanted to do something useful. He wondered if texting Bruce counted.


	15. Chapter 15

Hal stretched, cracked his back, and craned his neck. For some reason he could no longer remember, he’d been looking forward to monitor duty with Bruce. He imagined it had probably had something to do with the expectation that they would be alone, or at least that Hal wouldn’t be keeping an eye out for incipient emergencies while Bruce and Clark had a quiet, tense argument in another room, with the door closed. He wondered what would happen if he called Bruce to ask what they were fighting about.

The low hum of their voices stopped, and Hal tapped his foot against the base of the console, waiting patiently until he heard Bruce’s soft tread in the hallway.

“So, want to tell me what that was all about?” Hal asked casually. He didn’t bother to pretend he hadn’t been listening; Bruce knew him well enough by now that denial would be pointless. Bruce’s fingers flexed, just a brief, slight spasm, then relaxed.

“Personal matters,” Bruce grunted.

“Oh.” Hal tried to ignore the sting of that dismissal. Maybe he’d been reading too much into one night, if Bruce could still shut him out with a close-mouthed brush-off like that. Bruce turned back to him, his jaw softening.

“What’s personal?” Oliver asked, strolling in behind them. “Come on, it’s us. All for one and one for all, remember? None of us is as strong as all of us. No such thing as ‘personal matters’ around here.”

And just like that, Hal thought, it was gone. Bruce’s face might as well have been completely hidden by the mask. Hal silently cursed Oliver’s terrible sense of timing.

“Point taken,” Bruce said flatly. “If you want to discuss the ramifications of Superman’s interference in his girlfriend’s career with him, he’s heading toward the hangar.”

“Oh, hey, I think I left the toaster oven going in the breakroom,” Ollie said, snapping his fingers. “I should go take care of that before it starts a fire. Guess I’ll just have to skip that incredibly appealing chance for team bonding.”

He turned on his heel and headed for the training room. 

Hal watched him go and finally asked, “So, you think that complete lack of shame is congenital, or something he picked up in a car crash?”

“I think the assumption that he hasn’t spent a great deal of time and effort cultivating it does him a disservice,” Bruce said.

Hal stifled a laugh and shook his head instead. Leave it to Bruce to say it without even a hint of humor.

“Seriously, though, what’s happening here?” Hal asked, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the hangar.

“A credible threat was made against Lane. She’s been assigned extra security by the paper, police are taking it seriously, but he can’t be on-scene constantly.” Bruce paced the length of the screen-covered wall, his eyes playing over the displays, as he rattled off the details.

“Okay,” Hal said slowly. “And the part where this is somehow something you two need to go all junior debate club over?”

Bruce shot him a nettled look. “Junior?”

“You’re not allowed to call each other jackasses in varsity debate club,” Hal told him.

Bruce paused at that, and Hal wondered exactly what about the argument made that one still capable of landing. Hal had been swinging more or less blind, basing the guess on the tone of their voices and the fact that Clark hadn’t stopped to say goodbye before leaving. When Bruce started moving again, there was a caution to his posture that Hal hadn’t seen in a while.

“As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t a debate to have. He asked her to cancel a relatively high-profile interview. She told him, at length, what she thought of his request.”

“Seems reasonable,” Hal agreed. “He figures you’ve got a vote in this how?”

“I don’t,” Bruce said. “But I could theoretically cancel the interview.”

Hal rubbed his chin, running through the sequence of events again. Oliver had just been hanging out and screwing around; Hal wasn’t even sure if he’d been on the shift before his and Bruce’s. Clark, on the other hand, had very clearly been waiting for Bruce to show. Hal had barely had enough time to say hello before Clark had been breezing past him and asking Bruce if they could talk for a few minutes, in private, right now, if it wasn’t too much trouble. Bruce had looked impatient and irritable. The bickering had started almost as soon as the door had closed. Hal had gotten to sit out the latest installment of the ongoing argument about it, as opposed to the entire thing. Great.

“So, having gotten nowhere on this with his girlfriend, he’d like you to go over her head and make it not happen anyway. How, exactly, are you the jackass in this scenario?” Hal asked. “Not that you aren’t prone to a certain amount of... let’s call it bluntness.” Bruce scowled at him. “Hey, I’m on your side here. She’s a grown woman. This seems like it’s pretty open and shut.”

“It is,” Bruce said firmly. His lips twisted. “He has his reasons for being upset, though. Beyond the obvious, of course.”

“Moving on to how, exactly, you could torpedo this interview…”

“With a few phone calls,” Bruce told him. He leaned on the console and glared at some innocuous blip on the map. 

“And here I was figuring he’d asked you to rip out her distributor cap or something,” Hal snorted. “It’s in Gotham, then?”

“Yes.”

“If it’s in Gotham, what’s the actual problem?” Hal yawned and spun his chair around. No wonder they’d been fighting for so long. If Bruce was trying to weasel out of providing security for someone Clark thought practically hung the moon, it wouldn’t go over well. “Have you got a scheduling conflict or something? Are you going to be out of town?”

“I’ll be there,” Bruce said grimly.

Hal blinked at that. So the fight had probably been about Bruce not being quite enough of a bulwark against the forces of evil. Bruce stalking around like he wanted to hit something made slightly more sense. Still, Hal thought, it shouldn’t be too hard to smooth over. Bruce wasn’t completely immune to his charms if the note he’d left was anything to judge by.

“Okay, ignoring that completely inappropriate tone,” Hal said, “why is it that when I ask you to go to a party with me, I get a look like I’ve grown a second head, but the second a pretty reporter’s in danger, wild horses couldn’t drag you away?”

He flashed Bruce his best cocky grin, the one that had gotten Carol melting like butter even when she was irritated with him. Bruce grimaced like he suddenly had a headache, and Hal deflated.

“The pretty reporter in question is not above calling me if she sees fit,” Bruce explained.

Hal shrugged. “So call-block her. You know that’s a thing, right? Of course you know that’s a thing. You did it to Barda when she wouldn’t stop drunk-dialing you.”

“I did not,” Bruce said. He resumed pacing. “She needs to be able to contact me in case of a genuine emergency. I just told her I did so she’d stop trying to contact me during non-emergencies.”

“So much for them being excellent resources, huh?” Hal asked.

“There are only so many pictures of Mister Miracle doing handstands on a bar that any sane person could possibly need at three in the morning,” Bruce said flatly. “And yes, before you ask, I did point that out, and ask her to stop sending them, before I told her I was blocking her.”

“So you at least know that, _theoretically_ , you could just block Lois. Especially if she can’t talk Superman into just superspeeding his way over to Gotham to deliver messages for her.” Hal spread his arms. “I mean, obviously still show up to make sure she doesn’t get assassinated, but it’s not like you really need to--”

“She’s not above calling me _at home_ ,” Bruce corrected, his voice suddenly tired.

“Wait, Superman’s girlfriend knows who you are?” Hal asked, his jaw dropping. So much for the feeling that it was privileged information. “He told her?”

That got a sharp, mirthless bark of laughter out of Bruce. 

“He hasn’t even told Lane who _he_ is.” Bruce shook his head. “And it’s not something she’d ever be able to prove, but.” He sighed heavily. “Yes. She knows.”

Hal thought of Bruce, with all his fanaticism about security, getting IDed by a reporter. It had to have been a bitter pill to swallow. It explained how Clark had just somehow managed to recognize him once he’d peeked through the mask, though. Lois had been on the case already. 

Hal breathed around a sudden tightness in his chest. It wasn’t worry, he told himself. There was no way Lois would publicize the information. She knew what it would mean; she’d seen it up close and personal with every enemy Clark had made. All it would take was one person with a briefcase of shiny green rocks knowing Clark’s home address, and it would be game over for someone who was practically a god. Someone like Bruce, who needed armor to stop a bullet and a grappling line to fly, would be vulnerable to anyone with a grudge and a gun.

“How’d _that_ happen?” Hal asked finally.

“Mistakes were made,” Bruce said, turning back to the panel.

“That’s what you’re going with here,” Hal snapped. “Mistakes were made. Come on, spill it.”

Bruce’s shoulders stiffened, and Hal caught the look that slid across his face before he relented.

“I severely underestimated her willingness to hit me with a brick.”

“She hit you with a brick,” Hal said, running his fingers through his hair. “You’re practically a ninja, and she hit you with a brick.”

“It was in her purse. I was more concerned with the collapsible baton she had in her other hand.” Bruce paused over a dial Hal knew damn well didn’t need adjusting. “I feel it was an understandable lapse in judgement.”

“She hit you with her purse-brick so hard it, what, knocked the cowl right off your head?” Hal asked. 

“It left a minor amount of bruising, which would not have been an issue had she not seen me in civilian clothes the next day,” Bruce said, his jaw tight. “The entire incident wasn’t one of my finer moments. Satisfied?”

“No, I’m not satisfied!” Hal groaned, rubbing his forehead. “What the hell, B? You almost get brained by a lady who could fit in your pocket--”

“She’s a perfectly average size, she just looks tiny compared to him,” Bruce said.

“--and then hang out close enough that she can pick you out of a crowd in your civvies? Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re not really a blend-into-the-crowd type of guy.” Hal crossed his arms. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to Gotham. Maybe your mobsters imported so much muscle back during Prohibition that it’s permanently altered the gene pool and now the locals just don’t notice when they’re seeing a brick wall with legs everywhere they go. But you scare someone bad enough they clock you one--”

“I helped her fend off a few of Daggett’s goons. She didn’t realize I was with her, not them.”

Hal slumped down in his seat and glared at Bruce. “Who?”

“Gotham’s answer to Luthor,” Bruce said. “Half the ambition, none of the brains.”

“Whatever,” Hal sighed. “She made you, end of story, I guess. You gonna rat Supes out?”

Bruce wordlessly pulled a phone from one of the pouches on his belt, unlocked it, and handed it to Hal. There was a string of blurry pics of Scott, helpfully captioned “Is he not the epitome of physical perfection?”. Hal could practically hear Barda’s booming contralto as he read it. 

“Is there a particular reason you didn’t delete these?” Hal asked.

“Diana wanted to see them first. She finds that sort of thing charming, for some reason.”

Hal kept scrolling. His own text from a few days ago--“How’d you know when to set the alarm for?”--and one from a Gordon, a short, simple “Found anything?”. Then was one from someone known only as ‘NO.’ reading “Miss me?” followed by a smiling cat’s face. The others, a grand total of eleven, were from Lane.

“I’m sensing a certain theme, here,” Hal said after a moment. “Almost like she knew he was going to do this.”

“And was not particularly pleased about the prospect,” Bruce agreed.

“These started two days ago.” Hal picked at his cast, bracing himself for the inevitable ‘Well spotted.’ Bruce waited silently for him to get to the point. “You’ve been fighting about this for two days.”

“It took six hours to nail down precisely what it was that I wasn’t supposed to do, and another thirteen to establish that simply promising not to do it was somehow not the end of the discussion,” Bruce explained. “The argument itself only started one day ago.”

“Also, you have emojis installed,” Hal continued. “And someone else you’re not call-blocking but won’t pick up for.”

Bruce snatched the phone back and glared at Hal. 

“I wouldn’t need them if people would stop using them at me,” he grumbled. “Do you have any idea how infuriating a series of indecipherable boxes with question marks are?”

Neatly ignored, Hal thought. He decided to let it go. “So, the three of you have been fighting about this for the past day, and at no point did any of you think of calling in the cavalry?”

“The cavalry?” Bruce asked.

“Yes, the cavalry. The what, three dozen superheroes we’ve got on the roster now for precisely this sort of situation?” Hal pulled up the schedule on the center screen. “What’s Superman got that he needs covered so he can go be underfoot in Gotham during Lois’s interview?”

“Metropolis in general.” Bruce looked over Hal’s shoulder, some of the irritation draining out of his posture. “There’s been a spike in the amount of Apokolips tech turning up on the streets. It’s coming from somewhere, but he hasn’t been able to pinpoint the source.”

“I’ll ask Captain Marvel and Flash if they’re free for a few hours, and we’ll keep an eye on everything. Bam.” Hal put his hands behind his head and grinned. “Problem solved. See? You could have saved yourself some time just by telling me about this sooner. Old flight school secret: Sometimes the best way through a mountain is around it.”

Hal could practically feel the weight of Bruce’s gaze settling on his arm.

“I’m almost completely healed up, and I’ll be backing up a guy who can outrun time and a guy who could probably fight Superman to a standstill if he weren’t so busy idolizing him,” Hal sighed. “For a _few hours_. It will be _fine_. Also, that’s pretty rich coming from a guy who just spent the better part of an hour--”

“It was fifteen minutes at best.”

“--arguing with somebody because he wants to bubblewrap the planet to protect his girlfriend.”

“This only solves the problem if Superman actually agrees to it,” Bruce said after a moment, and Hal considered it a tacit surrender.

“It’ll probably sound better coming from somebody who hasn’t spent the past twenty-four hours telling him to suck it,” Hal scoffed. “You have this tendency to make people dig in their heels a little sometimes, B.” He buffed his fingernails on his uniform and smiled. “I, on the other hand, am an expert diplomat.”

“Getting Diana to suggest it does not count as diplomacy,” Bruce sighed.

“I’m not going to--” Hal stopped. There was a cold-blooded elegance to the idea. “Well, I wasn’t going to, but now that I think about it, there’s no way in hell he could possibly tell her no without having to explain in excruciating detail exactly why he’s telling her no, is there?” He rubbed his chin. “And then she’d give him that look that makes you feel like you just saw yourself naked under fluorescent lights at four in the morning. You know, you can be pretty vicious when you want to be.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re referring to,” Bruce said drily.

“Of course not.” Hal rolled his eyes. “That settles it, though. I’ll have this whole thing signed, sealed, and delivered by tonight.”

“Flash and Marvel haven’t said yes yet,” Bruce reminded him.

“Flash owes me twenty bucks, and I’ll tell the good captain that we can hit that world’s fair thing in the park after we’re done,” Hal said, grinning. “Maybe you can catch a ride back to Metropolis with Lane. We could make a night of it.”

“Captain Marvel wants to... he does know it’s essentially a technology-focused county fair, yes?” Bruce asked.

Leave it to Bruce to get stuck on the least interesting part of that, Hal thought sourly.

“He said he wanted to go, and he seemed to have a pretty good idea of what it was,” Hal said, shrugging. “I feel like he maybe had kind of a deprived childhood. Sort of like how every so often Superman still seems a little impressed with towns that have more than one stoplight. So, I was asking you out on a date?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll be there.” Bruce waved a hand dismissively.

Hal leaned back and put his feet up on the console. “Score one for the Green Lantern. Wait, you’re not just saying that to shut me up, are you?”

“Of course I’m not,” Bruce said, frowning. “What purpose could that possibly serve?”

* * *

Bruce hung his cape over the back of a chair and carefully slid the cowl off. His phone buzzed again, and he resisted the urge to leave it in the cave with its battery removed. He’d been hoping for some semblance of privacy, a quiet evening, and an opportunity to talk to Hal. Bruce removed the armor, methodically checking the plates and joints for signs of wear or damage. He pulled on a t-shirt and sweats, the comfortable camouflage of a man at ease in his own home; Alfred had banished the costume from the house early on. 

Bruce hadn’t been expecting the hornet’s nest he’d walked into with Clark, hadn’t been expecting to go on patrol after his shift on the monitor ended, hadn’t been expecting the city to be as active as it had been. 

Poor judgment on all counts, he thought.

What Clark could possibly be thinking, Bruce didn’t know. Lois was a brilliant investigator on top of being tenacious, intuitive, and possessed of a formidable temper. It was one thing for her to be irritated with Superman and his attempts to keep her safe in the face of her own penchant for crusading. It would be quite another thing for her to look back, when she eventually found out that Clark Kent and Superman were one and the same, and see the number of times her colleague and sometime-rival had been in favor of hampering her career.

Bruce could hardly tell him to trust her. Bruce could hardly tell him to take the leap of faith, confess everything, and assume that they’d work things out. As much as Clark loved her, there was a fissure there, a split between the man he’d grown up to be and the man conjured up for public consumption whenever he put on the suit, and Clark needed her to love both sides of him. Bruce understood it as thoroughly as he didn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to giving advice in that regard. But at the same time, he knew them both well enough to see the precise shape and intensity of the eruption that would come when she found out on her own, if Clark kept meddling. If Bruce could hardly tell Clark to trust her, he could hardly refrain from telling him that he was making a mistake by not doing so.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand Clark’s urge to keep Lois safe. His eyes strayed to the dim glow of his phone’s screen. It was the same reason he’d never really cut Selina off no matter how bad an idea it was to remain open to contact. The same reason he’d set up an extremely generous and absolutely untraceable fund for Alfred to use in the event the man ever came to his senses and decided to disappear into a peaceful retirement. The same reason it was a test of will to not grab Hal by the shoulders and shake him until he realized how very close he’d come to dying in the fight that had broken his arm. It was even the same reason he had to bite his tongue every time Leslie, with her Crime Alley clinic and her stubborn refusal to back down in the face of slumlords and gang leaders, lectured him about letting the police handle things. 

The fantasy of there being something that he could do to put up a wall between danger and the people he cared about was an exceptionally seductive one. How much more so would it be if Bruce had the same sort of raw power at his disposal that Clark did?

Bruce scrubbed at his face. Of all the things he hadn’t expected to come of his minor responsible-businessman reformation, getting caught up in a spat between Lois and Clark had been perhaps the one he should have. The death-threats had come up suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere four days ago. Public relations had set up the interview a week ago, when they’d caught wind of back-channel nonsense about LexCorp and Wayne Enterprises supposedly in talks for an IP-sharing arrangement. There was nothing to it, of course, but it was poorly-timed. Luthor had launched yet another appeal of his convictions for racketeering and extortion ten days ago, putting his crimes back in the spotlight, and suddenly Wayne Enterprises needed to be seen publicly denying any ties to either the man or the criminal conspiracy of a multinational he’d founded. They couldn’t afford to have the company name linked with LexCorp in the media without a firm, immediate rebuttal. 

Lane was the sensible choice for the interview. She was an excellent reporter with a reputation for being incorruptible, and she’d taken an enormous amount of very obvious glee in crucifying Bruce Wayne on previous occasions. Clark had been quick to point out privately--and not a little acidly--that she’d only been trying to help shore up his cover. Lois would get a ratings boost and a solid reminder to her editor that, as much trouble as she could be, she did good work and moved papers with it. Bruce would get a wider audience than strictly business media would provide. 

The biggest benefit from a corporate standpoint was that, with their history, there would be no way anyone could credibly accuse her of softballing him. The only decent thing to come of it from a personal standpoint was the tidy solution it presented to the conversation he hadn’t been able to have with Hal. The interview would be high-profile. Hal would be watching for it now. His first glimpse of Bruce’s day job would be relatively tame, something palatable enough to inoculate him against the tabloid allegations of drunken orgies. They would go from there. The interview would, as Hal had advised, go around the obstacle rather than trying to batter through it. The only real problem was Clark.

Bruce couldn’t cancel without making a complete ass of himself with the board, and PR would just move Lucius Fox into his seat, making the sacrifice pointless. Bruce couldn’t demand a different reporter without hamstringing Lois, which wasn’t an acceptable option. It was, Bruce felt, not a particularly complicated thing. But the moment Clark had opened his mouth about Bruce taking any opportunity to play the idiot in public, the idea of explaining it to him had suddenly lost all appeal.

What had he said to Clark? “I’ll be right sitting right next to her, what can you possibly think I’d let happen?”

Bruce grimaced at the memory of Clark’s response.

“So I get the chance to lose both of you at the same time? Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

That had been the breaking point, hadn’t it? Bruce closed his eyes and let his head rest against the cool stone of the cave’s wall. He’d turned on his heel and walked away from the conversation, his bruised ego as good a cover as any for the uneasy twist in his gut at Clark’s bleak tone. After years of operating on his own, navigating around the GCPD’s shifting political landscape and its alternating hostility toward and grudging tolerance of his activities, avoiding personal entanglements as a risk he couldn’t afford, he’d been blind to the possibility of becoming a chink in someone else’s armor. He’d realized his mistake too late; once it was formed, Clark was as incapable of abandoning a friendship as he was of ignoring someone in distress. No matter how often they might disagree, no matter how much Clark might disapprove of Bruce’s life or methods, no matter how much danger it might put Clark in, there was no point at which he’d do the reasonable thing and step back. 

Bruce shook himself and started moving again. Lingering over his mistakes could wait until morning. He was exhausted, and he had promises to keep over the next few days. He’d have to trust Hal and Diana to act as force multipliers and accomplish what he hadn’t been able to do. The cheerful willingness with which Hal had made Bruce’s problems his own was a brief spark of warmth against the rest of the night.

A sudden gust of wind and a softly cleared throat alerted Bruce to Clark’s presence. Bruce’s eyes went to the car, and when had it become so difficult to not think of it as the batmobile? Hal and his damnable nicknames. Even Alfred had barely managed to suppress a chuckle at that one. 

Clark’s preferred loitering spot was empty, and Bruce turned to the cave’s entrance. Clark was waiting practically on the doorstep, as if he didn’t expect to be permitted entrance.

“I came to apologize,” he said quietly.

Bruce stifled a sigh. He’d learned within two weeks of working with Clark that his customary ‘Don’t let it happen again’ was not something Clark was interested in hearing. Clark had been raised by people who didn’t consider it a proper apology without an actual discussion of where things had broken down, and Bruce’s aggressive disinterest in talking about emotional issues had been a thin barricade against the force of Pa Kent’s imparted wisdom. It had been Bruce’s experience that discussing painful realities did little to alter them. There were no words that could unmake a mistake, bring back the dead, or restore lost trust. The only avenue left open was not failing in the same way a second time. Clark lived in a different world, though, and the best Bruce could hope for was occasionally diverting him into more appropriate channels.

“Save it for after you’ve apologized to Lois,” Bruce told him, turning toward the stairs.

“I’ve already started on that.” Clark took a few tentative steps closer. “I think the second step is not waking her up at four in the morning on a work night to keep saying it.”

Bruce looked at him, trying not to see the slump in Clark’s shoulders and the pain on his face. The only thing Bruce wanted was to fall into bed and ignore the world for a few hours. Nothing good came from people needing him. He should have made Clark understand that years ago, before any of this had happened, before Clark had come to see distance between them as a thing to be closed instead of respected. Now, even the barest excuse for an olive branch would be enough. One day, Bruce thought, he might be able to keep himself from extending it.

“Come upstairs. I’m not watching you try to explain your behavior on an empty stomach.”

He could practically feel the gratitude radiating from Clark as he followed Bruce up the steps and into the kitchen, and he gritted his teeth against it. There would come a day when Clark understood that this was Bruce being weak, not kind. In the meantime, this was precisely the sort of disruption he’d always tried to avoid; the invitation was hardly a small thing. He wished Clark didn’t know him well enough to realize it. It wasn’t until Bruce was whisking a pot of hot cocoa together--more for something to do that didn’t involve staring silently at Clark until the Kryptonian decided to say his piece than because either of them actually wanted it--that Clark spoke again.

“I’m sorry for what I said, earlier. I trust you to keep Lois safe. I do. And I don’t exactly have room to talk about you being safe when…” He stopped and looked down at his hands. He clenched his fists. “When all it takes is Darkseid or Poison Ivy getting into my head, and then…”

“If you hadn’t been fighting them tooth and claw, I’d be dead,” Bruce said simply. “If it happens again, you’ll do the same.”

“For someone who thinks the worst of people, you’ve got a lot of faith in me,” Clark muttered.

“You’ve proven trustworthy in the past,” Bruce pointed out.

Clark put his face in his hands. “Is that your version of telling me to get bent?”

“Have I ever been less than direct about that?” He’d lost count of how many times they’d told each other to go to hell that first year of working together. It had seemed like every time he’d turned around, Clark had found some new stupidity to engage in, some new risk to ignore, or some new way of calling Bruce reckless for a situation that had been perfectly under control. Being coy about telling Clark where he could shove his lack of planning, his powers, or his condescension hadn’t been an option. Bruce turned the heat down on the burner. “Oliver talked to you after all, then?”

“Sort of? He started off by showing me a calendar, explaining that it was the twenty-first century, and running through a brief history of women’s lib.” Clark laughed softly, his expression raw. “I know I had it coming, but still.”

“Did he happen to touch on the part where asking Lois to stop exposing corruption and injustice is like asking a bird not to fly?” Bruce asked.

“No, because I don’t think he’s ever met her,” Clark said. “If he had, I think he might have been a little more understanding about the thought of a world without her.”

“Clark--”

“Did you know we visited STAR Labs a few weeks ago?” Clark interrupted. He looked up, and Bruce filled a pair of mugs. The cocoa wasn’t half as good as Alfred’s, and there was no telling what it tasted like to a man with senses as fine as Clark’s, but he always seemed to appreciate the gesture regardless. Bruce pressed one into Clark’s hands and sat down across from him.

“No.” Bruce might follow Lois’s work closely, but he didn’t make a habit of following her schedule unless he had a reason.

“They accidentally opened a doorway into another dimension.” Clark rotated the cup in his hands carefully. “She was gone before I could do anything. I was in the room, and still.”

“She came back,” Bruce said gently. This, he knew how to deal with. This, he saw every night. Something bad had happened, something worse could have happened. The trick was to confine the reaction to what _had_ happened, to not let it expand to the worst possible outcome.

“She might not have,” Clark countered. “The world she wound up in, their version of her died. Car bomb. Their version of me was too late to do anything.” He swallowed. “Not Darkseid, not Brainiac, not Luthor, not even Mannheim. Just some low-level gangster with enough money to hire a good hitman.”

“She did come back, though,” Bruce said. “She’s here. She’s fine.”

He raised the cup to his lips and waited for Clark to tell him the rest of it.

“Their Superman lost his nerve. Tried to control everything, make sure no one got hurt again.”

“And that worked out well, did it?” Bruce asked.

Clark flinched. “No.”

“Sometimes we have the great advantage of being able to learn by example instead of making a mistake for ourselves.” Bruce sipped his drink. “In case you needed a restatement of my position on this.”

“So just let her go into danger alone,” Clark said miserably. “That’s your answer.”

“My answer is to respect her the same way you’d respect any other colleague and let her make her own decisions about her own life. She knows the risks as well as she knows the rewards,” Bruce sighed. He was sick to his teeth of this fight. “You may like Hal’s answer better.”

“You talked it over with him?” Clark’s expression was a silent appeal for further explanation.

“He asked,” Bruce told him flatly. “It’s the same way Oliver found out, incidentally. Next time you want to speak about something privately, it might be better not to make a show of it in front of the more directly inquisitive members of the team.” He tapped his fingertips on the table, waiting for Clark to say something. Bruce continued when he didn’t. “He’s volunteered to patrol Metropolis with Marvel and Wally so you can accompany Lois without imperilling the city.”

“They’d do that?” Clark asked.

“You’ve helped them in the past, and, as he pointed out, this is more or less the _raison d’être_ of the League. None of us can be everywhere at once.” Bruce started when he found himself being embraced by someone who’d been on the other side of the table a split-second before. “Why are you hugging me?”

Clark let go and stepped back, shaking his head. “Thank you.”

“It was Hal’s idea,” Bruce reminded him, frowning.

“Then tell him thank you for me.”

“You could be in Coast City in ten minutes, and you have his phone number,” Bruce said. “You should probably tell him yourself.”


	16. Chapter 16

Hal flopped back onto the hotel bed and tried to ignore the way Bruce was utterly, completely failing to be early. He’d barely been able to concentrate at the World of Tomorrow installation thanks to Bruce’s promise to join him later. Marvel had been like a kid in a candy store, talking nonstop about this exhibit and that ride and oh, look over there, they’ve got pygmy goats, and Hal had only just managed to keep up with nodding and agreeing at the appropriate gaps in conversation. He hadn’t figured the magic-powered bruiser for being a closet science-buff, but he supposed it was up there with finding out that Shayera was basically an intergalactic poolshark. Finding out that she’d mostly used her skills to start barfights? That hadn’t been nearly as much of a stretch.

Hal rolled over impatiently and checked his phone again. No missed calls, no texts. Of course, it was Bruce. Hal supposed there was some unfairness in expecting Mr. Punctuality to be early, even if Hal had texted him the room number and a really terrible double entendre about ordering bratwurst from room service over an hour ago. He’d resisted the urge to send pics, a heroic bit of self-restraint he was now beginning to regret. 

On the one hand, there was no avoiding the knowledge that he’d have declared himself the epitome of physical perfection while sending the texts, and maybe he didn’t particularly want Bruce comparing him to a drop-dead gorgeous professional contortionist right that second. On the other hand, he desperately wanted to surprise Bruce with the glorious absence of a cast in person.

Hal stretched his arm and flexed his hand. ‘Going out of town’ had somehow turned into a reasonable excuse for having it removed early. He still wasn’t sure exactly what had turned the conversation with the doctor in his favor, and he was still grounded for another week, and he still had physical therapy to complete after that, but just having it off felt damn good. The first thing he’d done afterward had been to take an hour-long shower, no plastic bags or medical tape in sight. The water had been cold by the end of it, and he hadn’t given even the slightest hint of a damn.

A soft knock on the sliding door leading to the balcony startled him enough that he almost fell off the bed. Clark couldn’t possibly be dense enough to think that thanking him in person needed to happen right now, and Captain Marvel had been heading back to Fawcett City when they’d split up. Hal opened the curtain just enough to see a tall, dark-haired man standing on the other side of the glass. Hal cocked his head and felt stupid when his brain caught up with his eyes a split-second later.

“Did you seriously rappel down the building?” he asked, opening the door and stepping aside. “Because I think that’s the sort of thing they notice around here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I went over the balcony above yours.” Bruce slid past him. “Why is your cast off?”

“Nice to see you, too.” Hal shut the door and glared at him, nettled. “I thought you’d be happy. The doctor said it was fine, if I was going to be out of town. It was coming off at the end of the week anyway.”

“It was coming off in five days,” Bruce corrected.

“Okay, honestly.” Hal rubbed his temples. “Do you have my phone tapped or something? Because, and as much as I hate myself for this, it’s not exactly a deal-breaker, but it would be nice to know.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “You told everyone how long it would be. I listened. I hardly think that qualifies as espionage, even with you.”

“I haven’t said anything about it since…” Hal trailed off, trying to remember the last time he’d brought it up around the rest of the League. It felt like it had been forever.

“Four days after you decided to rotate yourself back onto monitor duty,” Bruce supplied.

Hal started to scoff, then paused. “Oh my god.”

“What?”

“Is this about what I said when we were screwing on your plane?” Hal demanded, smirking. “You went home and marked it on your calendar or something, didn’t you? Ha. I knew it. You totally like me.”

And then just like that Bruce was pressing him against the wall and kissing him, one hand tangling in his hair and the other sliding up his back. Hal was breathless and half hard by the time Bruce let him back up for air.

“I’d have thought I’d made that abundantly clear by now,” Bruce murmured, his voice a rough purr against Hal’s throat.

“Ah.” Hal squirmed slightly. “I think the evidence is still a little weak. I mean, I’m obviously open to persuasion, but--”

“You can be such a child sometimes.” Bruce laughed softly and shook his head.

“You know you love it.” 

Bruce snorted, and Hal grinned at him, back on firmer ground now. He’d been more nervous than he’d liked to admit. They’d never actually scheduled anything before, had they? And then Bruce had been weirdly chill about it, for him, even accounting for the fact that he was working Lane’s case on top of whatever had been sucking up his daylight hours in Gotham. Hal would have been a little jittery even if Bruce hadn’t appeared out of nowhere in designer jeans and a shirt tailored to make him look smaller than he actually was, clean-cut and gorgeous and the polar opposite of the slouching, prowling, average-joe presentation Hal had somehow expected just because that was how he’d looked when he’d shown up at Hal’s apartment. The unanticipated reaction to his cast being off had just been icing on the cake.

Bruce kissed him again, harder this time, and Hal dug his fingers into Bruce’s hips.

“I may just hold you to that promise, you know,” he warned.

“Not for another five days,” Bruce said. He mouthed gently at the spot where Hal’s neck met his shoulder, and Hal gritted his teeth.

“The cast is off!” he protested. 

“A technicality,” Bruce retorted.

Hal groaned. Not that he thought Bruce would insist on handling him with kid gloves. He’d been plenty enthusiastic when they’d been in Hal’s bed. But the reminder of Bruce holding him close and telling him he’d be as rough as Hal wanted had gone straight to his cock, and he couldn’t help feeling teased. 

Then again, maybe he could put Bruce’s latest transformation--and the chameleon-like shift from one thing to another without actually being _in disguise_ was going to take some mental recalibration on Hal’s part--to good use. It hadn’t taken much for Bruce to turn into the sort of country-club blueblood Hal had never been able to get the time of day from back when he’d been a cadet, and he wasn’t above acknowledging a few lingering, frustrated desires from his academy years. Hal wedged his hands against Bruce’s chest and put some space in between them.

“So, you tearing my clothes off, throwing me up against the wall, and fucking me so hard my teeth rattle until I physically cannot come anymore.” Hal watched Bruce’s eyes go dark at that, and god, they were going to have some fun once he pried an all-clear out of his doctor. “That’s off the table.”

“For the time being,” Bruce grunted.

“Okay. I can work with that.” 

Hal reached up and ruffled Bruce’s hair a little, then dropped his hands to Bruce’s shirt and undid a few more buttons. Bruce raised his eyebrows, and Hal took him by the waist and neatly turned them. Bruce leaned back slightly, bracing against the wall, and Hal’s eyes raked over him. Bruce’s lips quirked into a wisp of a smile at Hal’s expression, and Hal flattered himself by imagining it was fondness. 

“Dare I ask?”

“You know how many rich boys I’ve had the pleasure of watching walk away after I struck out with them?”

“Quite a few?” Bruce hazarded.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Their loss.”

“Smooth,” Hal chuckled. “Can’t feel too bad about it when you’re putting them to shame on a collective level right now.” 

He leaned into Bruce and cupped his length through the jeans, grinning when Bruce’s eyes darkened at his touch. 

“Hal--”

He interrupted Bruce with a kiss, this one rough and hungry and demanding. Bruce grabbed his ass and pulled him close, and Hal wondered what those hands would feel like on the back of his head, with Bruce’s cock sliding down his throat. He peeled himself off Bruce and licked his lips.

“What?” Bruce asked, his eyebrows rising.

“Nothing.” Hal dropped to his knees, and Bruce rocked his weight back onto his heels as Hal tore his fly open. Hal swallowed him in one smooth motion, and Bruce gasped. Hal pulled off, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and smirked up at him. “Just imagining how hard anyone else who blows you is going to have to work to top this.”

Bruce hissed when he started back up, and Hal found himself having to track Bruce’s reactions by the way his muscles tensed or his fingers curled in Hal’s hair rather than the hoped-for sounds. Bruce was infuriatingly quiet, and Hal teased him mercilessly without getting so much as a moan in response. Not, he thought, that the sight of Bruce with his back arched and his eyes closed and every muscle in his body clearly screaming at him to follow Hal’s mouth when he pulled back to begin again wasn’t its own reward.

When Bruce finally came, he was breathing like he’d just been in a fight and leaning against the wall like he’d fall without it, and Hal couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to fuck anyone so badly. He twisted his hands in Bruce’s shirt and kissed him, shoving his tongue into Bruce’s unresisting mouth and hauling him toward the bed.

Bruce let himself be manhandled onto the mattress, and Hal stopped for a moment to just look at him, to revel in a feeling of triumph. His jaw ached, and his knees felt bruised, but Bruce was watching him like he was the only person on the planet, like there was nothing else he’d rather be doing with his time. Hal swallowed.

He started undressing Bruce quickly, needing him naked as soon as humanly possible, and Bruce obliged by unbuttoning his shirt as Hal pulled off his boots. Hal stripped off Bruce’s pants, then let out a startled curse when he tripped over one of the boots and barely managed to catch himself on the edge of the mattress before he hit the floor.

Bruce rolled over and shrugged his shirt back on. “Are you all right?”

“Yup.” Hal closed his eyes. And just like that, he thought, he’d managed to completely destroy the mood.

“Did you just…?” Bruce’s eyes went from Hal to the tangled pile of clothes on the floor.

“Sure did,” Hal sighed, pushing himself onto his knees. He grimaced. “You know, the classy thing to do would be to not make that face about it.”

“What face?” Bruce asked.

“ _That_ face. The one you’re making right now.” Hal got to his feet and stretched his arm carefully. He couldn’t feel any new catches or twinges. “The ‘I can’t believe I was going to let you fuck me’ face.”

“Hal, these things happen.” Bruce propped himself up on his elbows. “Come here.”

“To you?”

“Where else?” Bruce asked, his brows furrowing. Hal glared at him. 

“Do _these things_ happen _to you_?” he clarified. “Or are you just saying that to get me back into bed?”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Would that necessarily be such a blow to your ego?”

Hal crossed his arms and scowled.

“Fine.” Bruce sighed and looked at the ceiling. “There may have been an incident with an improperly-maintained fire escape.”

“A fire escape,” Hal repeated.

“And another incident involving a skylight,” Bruce said reluctantly.

“Define ‘incident,’” Hal said.

“I failed to exercise due caution.” Bruce gave him an exasperated look. “Are you coming back to bed or not?”

“I just ruined probably the hottest thing to happen to me in three months,” Hal pointed out.

Bruce rolled easily onto his knees, caught Hal by the waist, and dragged him onto the bed, all trace of languor gone. Hal swallowed at the feel of Bruce’s corded muscles shifting against his chest, his heart beating harder and his cock stirring back to life. Bruce pinned him, brushed a few strands of hair out of his eyes, and kissed him softly.

“Nothing is ruined,” Bruce said. He shifted so that he was stretched along Hal’s side. “If you want to stop, that’s fine. But if almost falling ten stories off a tenement building with a terrible safety record couldn’t derail anything, this certainly isn’t going to.”

“You kept going?” Hal asked. Of course he had, Hal thought. Why had he somehow assumed an ‘incident’ involving a near-death experience would be all it took to slow Bruce down? Come to think of it, Hal tripping over the clothes he’d just pulled off probably wasn’t even the dumbest thing Bruce had seen him do, at least in Bruce’s opinion.

“Well, we _didn’t_ fall. And I was a bit invested in the matter by that time,” Bruce explained, kissing his neck. 

He unbuttoned Hal’s shirt and began tracing Hal’s collarbone with his tongue. Hal shivered, then arched against him when Bruce’s tongue flicked over his nipple.

“Is that a yes, a no, or a maybe?” Bruce asked.

“Maybe,” Hal said. “Give me another thirty minutes of it to decide?”

Bruce laughed quietly and slid down to kiss his hip. “Take all the time you need.”

* * *

“Just five more minutes,” Hal mumbled, groping for a pillow to pull over his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this comfortable, and he didn’t want to get up. Bruce kissed the side of his throat.

“Hal, wake up,” he said softly. “It’s your ring.”

Hal yawned and blinked at the rhythmic green pulse coming from his hand. Bruce was still curled against his back, one arm wrapped loosely around his hips, and Hal had never been more tempted to ignore a call in his life. He felt like he’d been hit by a hurricane, and he was sure that, if he played his cards right, Bruce would be more than happy to indulge him in another round or two.

“They wouldn’t be contacting me if it wasn’t an emergency,” he sighed.

“I know.” 

There was a heaviness to Bruce’s tone that told Hal he didn’t like it, but he could hardly argue with it. Hal yawned again, and he couldn’t help resenting the way Bruce was somehow already fully alert. His own brain usually took a few minutes to catch up with the rest of his body, even when a truly epic amount of caffeine was involved, but with Bruce it was like flipping a switch. There was no space between asleep and awake with him. Hal rolled over onto his other side and pulled Bruce close.

“The five o’clock shadow looks good on you,” Hal said, running his thumb along Bruce’s jaw. 

It did, too. Hal somehow managed to look like he was halfway through a week-long bender whenever he didn’t shave, no matter how otherwise well-rested and well-fed he was. Bruce, though... Hal kissed him. It made Bruce look a little rough around the edges, a little more touchable than he had the day before. It was enough that Hal could ignore the crinkle of what could only be worry around his eyes.

Bruce kissed him back before shifting away, putting some space between them. “Just be careful.”

“When am I not?” Hal asked. The ring pulsed more insistently, and Hal slid out of bed.

“Do you want the list in alphabetical or chronological order?” 

Hal rolled his eyes, then tried not to flush at the way Bruce was watching him dress. There was appreciation there, especially when his gaze caught on the marks he’d left on Hal’s skin the night before, but there was something else, too. Affection, Hal thought. Simple, unguarded affection. No wonder it had taken him a second to recognize it on Bruce’s face.

“If they’re pulling me in, it means everyone else is already there,” Hal told him. “I’ll have plenty of back-up.”

“I know.”

“And the cast is only off a few days early.”

“Are you trying to reassure me or yourself?” Bruce asked.

“Neither, you jerk,” Hal said, grimacing. He flexed his arm. “I’m ready for anything.”

He buttoned his shirt and tried to smooth his hair back down. He’d never pass muster on a good day, but even Sinestro couldn’t complain too much if he was getting called in off medical leave. Hal leaned down to kiss Bruce again, and Bruce’s fingers curled around the back of his neck. Hal let his eyes close for a moment, then broke away reluctantly.

“Take care of yourself out there,” Bruce said gently, letting go.

“Says the guy who picks fights with the entire mob for fun,” Hal scoffed. He glanced at Bruce’s eyes, then looked down and bit his lip. “I know jet fuel isn’t the cheapest thing on the planet, but I’m probably going to be stuck in Coast City for a few days once I get back. If you’re free, you think you could make it out for a night without breaking the bank?” He shot Bruce a crooked grin. “We could pick up where we left off.”

Bruce’s brows furrowed for a second, surprise and something like dismay in his eyes, and Hal shrugged and turned away.

“Or not. I mean, it’s--”

“Hal,” Bruce interrupted. “Of course I can. Call me when you get back.”

Hal relaxed again. He’d misread it, that was all. He winked at Bruce.

“I’m off to save the universe, B. Catch you later.”


	17. Chapter 17

Bruce stared at the monitor and tried to focus. A meta-analysis of crime reports for the last year scrolled past for the third time, and his eyes slid over the numbers without drawing any meaning from them. After a fourth time, Bruce gave up and paused the feed. He wasn’t going to get any work done like this, and he knew it. He gathered a handful of files and climbed the stairs. If he couldn’t make any progress, at the very least he could try to get a decent night’s sleep.

If he’d been in a more forgiving mood, he might have blamed it on the sheer number of things demanding his attention. 

Cobblepot was out on parole. Kord had decided that littering Wayne Enterprises offices with bugs was a reasonable response to a merger proposal. One of Intergang’s shell corporations had made very quiet inquiries about the health of Kord Industries, and Bruce desperately hoped the Blue Beetle wouldn’t be making any sudden appearances in their warehouses. Flash had tried to rope him into helping with Mirror Master and then taken it personally when Bruce had pointed out that he had little expertise in the field. 

He and Clark had traced the Apokolips tech in Metropolis back to a rec center under the control of Granny Goodness, only to have her and half her acolytes slip through their fingers. Kaznia had suffered a wave of minor scandals which had the cumulative result of undermining confidence in the cabinet and depressing the economy, which might have been less alarming if Ra’s al Ghul hadn’t had his eye on their Soviet-era stockpile of plutonium for years. 

Isley was peacefully holed up on a deserted island and showed no inclination to leave, which Bruce couldn’t have been happier about. That someone was hellbent on scheduling a weapons test on the island was less thrilling. So far his efforts to quash the test had only resulted in it being pushed back, and his attempts to find out who kept putting it back on the damned calendar had been fruitless.

It was, by anyone’s reckoning, a full plate. Because Bruce knew better than to overlook his own shortcomings, he dismissed it as the poor excuse it was. He’d had twice as much to contend with before, and it hadn’t slowed him down the way this had. Of course, on those occasions, he hadn’t let himself become so absorbed in personal issues. Bruce’s fingers tightened around the stack of folders. Running through and under and around everything else, nagging at him like the pain of a pulled muscle, was the one new variable: Hal’s increasingly alarming absence.

Bruce had expected Hal to be gone at least a week, given the circumstances under which he’d been called back into the field. An emergency requiring even Lanterns who’d been placed on medical leave was, definitionally, an all hands on deck situation. The threat would have been serious, the damage potentially severe, the clean-up afterward likely extensive. As Hal was almost ready to return to the field without restrictions, there would be little incentive to rotate him back off duty once the immediate crisis was averted. Two weeks had seemed more probable. Now that they were pushing a month, it was difficult not to dwell on the possibility that things had gone badly for the Corps.

The sticking point was that Bruce had felt a sudden dread as soon as he’d woken to the gentle green pulse of Hal’s ring. Hal had been safe in his arms, as relaxed and peaceful as Bruce had ever seen him. He’d fallen asleep to the sound of Hal’s breathing, then come awake in a wash of adrenaline at the flickering light. His first instinct had been to twitch the blanket over Hal’s hand, hold him tight, and tell him not to go. 

It was a reaction unreasonable in its totality, and Bruce knew it. He had no data indicating that this emergency was worse or bigger than any of the other emergencies to which Hal had responded in the past and from which Hal had come limping home, grinning and victorious. And even if he’d had cause to think it would be a mortal threat, how could he consider asking Hal to stay? That Bruce had even thought it seemed like a betrayal of everything he loved about the man.

Since then, Clark hadn’t picked up anything of note. None of the bands Shayera monitored had seen any unusual traffic. STAR Labs’ observatories had more of the same to report. Every means of investigating the situation to which he had access returned the same result, which was that his fear was grounded in nothing but fantasy and supposition. But the irrational conviction that something was drastically and disproportionately wrong refused to weaken. It was... irritating.

Bruce turned the lights on in the library and softened when he saw a covered tray sitting on his reading desk. At least Alfred seemed pleased with the last week’s schedule. Bruce set the files down and picked up the sandwich Alfred had left for him.

There was a way past this, and he knew it. He simply had to find it. He flipped open the thickest folder and grimaced at the black and white picture of Princess Audrey which greeted him. Diana wasn’t in a much better situation than he was when it came to romantic partners, but she’d remained focused and unflappable while he could feel himself fraying around the edges. He was having difficulty prioritizing. Important details were slipping his mind, and having to look them up again was slowing him down. It was one thing if he was in the cave or in the office, but his confidence was slipping, and he couldn’t afford uncertainty or mistakes in the field. Bruce shook himself and closed the file again. He was missing something. Something simple, something that was staring him in the face, if only he had the brains to recognize it.

Alfred cleared his throat from the doorway, and Bruce looked up, a spasm of guilt reflexively stiffening his spine when he caught the expression on Alfred’s face. What had he done to earn the look of gentle disappointment this time?

“Was supper to your liking?” Alfred asked, collecting the dishes.

“Um.” Bruce had barely tasted it, and Alfred knew it. It was normally the sort of thing Alfred politely ignored, one more peculiarity to be swept under the rug, but it had been barely five days since a lengthy lecture on at least _pretending_ to appreciate his life. There was, after all, only so much of him that Alfred was willing to see sacrificed to the mission. And here he’d been grateful for the meal but too distracted to…

Bruce rubbed his eyes. “Alfred, you’re brilliant.”

“Indubitably, sir, but flattery won’t help you at the moment,” he sighed.

“I’ve been coming at all this from the wrong angle.” Bruce steepled his fingers and rested them against his lips.

“Brooding for hours on end instead of sleeping or seeing to your social commitments is yielding poor returns?” The edge of Alfred’s mouth turned up. “If only such an outcome could have been predicted.”

Bruce flushed slightly. “Yes, yes. I’ve been negligent. I finally know what to do about it, though.”

“Contact Master Clark and ask him to locate your paramore?”

Bruce rubbed his temples and took a deep breath. Alfred had not been best pleased to learn that Hal still didn’t know the entirety of who he was. His own protests that Hal didn’t seem to care had sounded hollow even to him.

“Under no circumstances,” Bruce said firmly.

Alfred gave him a tired look. “Self-sabotage is hardly a virtue.”

“It wouldn’t be myself I’d be sabotaging,” Bruce said grimly.

Hal was the Lantern Corps’s only human, and Bruce hadn’t needed to read much into Hal’s stories to conclude that Oa wasn’t as confident as they should have been in his abilities. The brush with Lantern bureaucracy when they’d dropped off the artifact Von had seized had only hardened his suspicions; they’d known who Hal was and had been openly dismissive of his claims. Anything that would make it seem like his human teammates were a liability, or agreed with Oa’s unspoken assessment that Hal couldn’t handle himself, was out of the question. Especially if the only reason to look for him was Bruce’s inability to master his own emotions.

“Do be sure to extend an invitation to dinner once contact is reestablished, won’t you?” Alfred asked, one of his questions that was only a notch down from a direct order. There was a gentleness to it that Bruce had only heard him use before when discussing Clark and Diana, and Bruce wondered if it was Alfred hoping for a partnership with a future.

“We’ll see,” Bruce sighed.

During the few spare moments when Bruce had managed to wrestle himself into really believing that Hal was fine, that Hal would be back any day, that things would be all right, he’d found himself trying to imagine a scenario in which telling Hal who he was didn’t result in Hal breaking things off. The idea that Hal would watch the interview and the matter would be settled had been turned on its ear by Hal’s halting invitation to Coast City. Whatever Hal imagined about his personal life, it was clearly off the mark by an order of magnitude if he was hemming about the financial strain of travel.

“Alfred?” Bruce said. Alfred paused and turned back, already halfway to the door and clearly giving up for the night. “...thank you. Again. I know I don’t always make it easy to tell, but... I do appreciate everything that you do for me.”

Alfred barely tamped down the smile behind the proper facade he wore like Bruce wore the cowl. “Someone has to see to it, Master Bruce. It might as well be me.”

Bruce smiled into his tea and shook his head. “Good night, Alfred.”

“Good night.”

Alfred’s step was a bit lighter as he closed the door, though, and Bruce was willing to take his wins where he could get them these days. He wondered if he could ask Wendy for a portfolio of positive press on his personal life, things that Hal might take as the careful facade they composed instead of the abdication of responsibility Clark saw. If Bruce presented them at the right moment, Hal might take it in stride, might even find it amusing instead of off-putting.

* * *

Bruce finished the last of the diagnostics on the monitoring systems with a satisfied hum, impressed in spite of himself. Cyborg had virtually eliminated the latency issues they’d been having with the satellite uplink in the field, and he’d increased the computer’s processing speed past what Bruce had thought it was physically capable of. Oliver and Clark would be pleased. He turned to go and found Shayera casually blocking the door, her wings unfurled just enough to make brushing past her impossible.

“Shayera.” He nodded a greeting and waited. Her arms were crossed, and her lips were set in a thin line, but he couldn’t think of anything he’d done that was likely to have upset her.

“You,” she grunted.

“Yes,” he agreed blandly. Shayera at a midpoint between mollified and a rolling boil of anger was a taciturn creature. And while he could sympathize to an extent, he’d found that the quickest way to discover what she was actually upset about when she was in a mood was to either apologize, offense undescribed, or antagonize her just enough that she was willing to yell at him about it. It generally didn’t take quite as much time and effort to antagonize her as it did to apologize credibly. Her eyes narrowed behind her mask.

“You set Flash up with an airship that can break the sound barrier.”

Bruce was glad of the cowl, at that particular moment. Of all the things he hadn’t expected someone who could fly to fixate on, Ted Kord’s dirigible topped the list.

“I put him in touch with someone who could help him develop a method for neutralizing Mirror Master’s powers,” Bruce said firmly. “That they decided to go joyriding in a blimp instead is less of a surprise than it should be.”

Though not, he thought, outside the realm of what he’d take as a positive outcome. Kord had looked as close to defiant as Bruce had ever seen him when Bruce had dropped from a rafter in his workshop, dumped a box full of listening devices on the workbench, and warned him away from investigating Wayne Enterprises. Not that Bruce particularly cared what Kord might find, but his bugs had been inexpertly placed and barely encrypted, and there was a real possibility that Kord’s hamfisted attempts to eavesdrop would complicate Bruce’s more subtle and longer-term methods of keeping tabs on what people were doing in his name. He hadn’t given Ted a chance to argue the point, though. The file on Mirror Master, a full inch and a half thick, had followed the bugs. 

“If you’re that bored, make yourself useful,” he’d growled. No one but Hal had ever argued with that growl. Clark and Diana weren’t impressed with it, and Oliver reserved some of his least polite gestures for it, but no one except Hal had ever seen fit to argue with it. Ted hadn’t broken the streak.

Bruce hadn’t expected him to. What he had expected, and what had apparently taken all of twenty-four hours to happen, was for Blue Beetle and Flash to become firm friends. Kord and Wally were cut from the same cloth, both affable men with soft hearts and a tendency toward attention-grabbing tactics. 

Bruce wasn’t entirely certain that them working together would be best for the metahuman community in general, but at least he could rest easy over Flash’s problems in Central City and the possibility of Beetle taking on Intergang alone and winding up shot dead for his trouble. Wally would either talk Ted out of it based on Clark’s complaints about the organization or be there to yank him out of the fray if things went south. And Ted had spent most of his adult life working on the sort of theoretical physics needed to deal with half of Wally’s usual suspects. They could keep each other busy while Bruce focused on keeping the League of Assassins from becoming a nuclear power courtesy of Kaznia.

Or at least that had been the plan. The tips of Shayera’s wings flared dangerously, and Bruce pretended not to notice. There was always the chance she’d rein in her temper, provided he didn’t openly acknowledge her anger.

“Why does he get an airship and the rest of us get stuck with a tin can that takes a month to get anywhere interesting?” she demanded.

“I assume you mean the Javelin?”

“Yes, I mean the Javelin.” Shayera glowered. “What’s Flash done to get on your good side lately? Arrow said he was reading you the Ryan Act not two days ago.”

Bruce considered correcting her, then discarded the idea. Let Oliver spring that trap, he thought.

“Flash was describing a problem he was having, and upset that I couldn’t help him with it. Blue Beetle has the necessary expertise.”

“And an airship!”

“And, apparently, an airship,” Bruce agreed. “Them working together was an obvious solution. I wasn’t favoring Flash over anyone else.”

“You’re sure about that?” Shayera’s feathers smoothed back into place, and Bruce let himself relax slightly.

“I try not to let personal feelings interfere with strategic decisions,” he said.

“Which is why Diana always gets to pick what we watch on movie-night?” she asked archly. He frowned and considered the question.

“She’s the only one who expressed a preference the last five times she made the selection,” Bruce pointed out. It wasn’t entirely true; he’d disagreed with her on three of those occasions. But since the entire point was exposing the less integrated members of the League to human culture, he imagined it would be unproductive to steer them away from forming preferences.

Shayera crossed her arms but didn’t call him on the discrepancy. “Well, next time you’re assigning partners, I call dibs on Airship Man.”

“He goes by Blue Beetle,” Bruce sighed, “and you cannot call dibs on a person.”

“Green Arrow does it all the time,” she protested. 

Bruce tried not to grimace. She wasn’t wrong, but people ignored Oliver in a way they wouldn’t ignore her, and in the event that they did, he didn’t see her taking it well. He mentally added the conversation to his list of things to tell his past self if he ever gained access to a reliable time machine. _If you listen to Clark and join the Justice League, you’ll spend five minutes of your life--time that you’ll never get back--justifying your decisions to an alien who doesn’t understand why she shouldn’t model her social interactions on Oliver Queen’s most annoying impulses._

It fell drastically below spending time dealing with Oliver Queen’s most annoying impulses on the list, but still.

“Green Arrow’s behavior is unproductive more often than not,” he said flatly. “And it’s excused more often than it should be on the basis of him being a ridiculous person who doesn’t mean it. Since people take you more seriously than they do him, I’d recommend against emulating it.”

Shayera folded her wings flat against her back and stared at him. “Why are humans so utterly bizarre?”

“Corporate manipulation of mass media,” Bruce told her. An idea occurred to him, and he cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. “Do you know Cyborg?”

She gave him a blank look and shrugged. She’d been on patrol during the upgrades, but he was sure they’d met before.

“The Stones’ son?” Bruce asked. She shook her head, and he considered what she was likely to have noticed about him. “He can turn his arm into a plasma cannon?”

“Oh, him!” Shayera brightened visibly. “Dr. Charles introduced us once, but…” She paused. “Why?”

“Poison Ivy has gone off the grid, and someone appears to be deliberately trying to antagonize her into going active again. I asked Cyborg to locate the person or persons behind it, but he’s only seen combat a few times, and he’s young. I don’t expect that he’ll run into any trouble.” He’d calculated the possibility at close to zero, in fact, since he only needed information and the mission was purely investigative in nature. He was also quite sure that Shayera didn’t need to know that. “But I’d like a more seasoned hero backing him up, just in case.”

“Of course I’ll do it.” Shayera grinned, and Bruce chose to ignore the glint in her eye. For everything that had happened to him in his short life, Victor was surprisingly level-headed, and he doubted Shayera’s enthusiasm for mayhem would prove infectious.

“Thank you.”

Bruce swept around her before she could object to anything else. He’d hoped that reframing the long list of problems needing his attention as something to distract him from Hal’s absence, rather than considering Hal’s absence a distraction from his duties, would work. And it had, to a passably satisfactory extent. He hadn’t anticipated the bizarre personal outcomes of his attempts at problem-solving, however. 

Looping Mr. Miracle and Big Barda in on the search for Granny Goodness’s contacts had resulted in Clark agreeing, on behalf of the entire League, to host their anniversary party at Mount Justice. It had been Oliver’s idea, but they had wanted to check with someone more responsible before they finalized the plans. Clark had, of course, thought it was brilliant and had waved the logistics issue away without even a moment’s consideration.

Bruce had tried to ask Gordon to keep a closer eye on Cobblepot’s known associates, some of whom had been reasonably successful in going straight during his stint in Blackgate, and been handed a thick file of purported Batman sightings in return.

“So long as we’re doing each other favors, just highlight the ones that are actually you, would you?” Jim had said. “I’m running a police department here, not a circus.”

A good third of them had been easily and immediately attributable to stray cats, a pair of flying foxes who’d recently escaped from a research facility, and normally-occurring urban wildlife. Slightly more worrying was the pattern of reports featuring a man-sized bat-monster in times and places which automatically precluded Bruce’s involvement. The last thing anyone needed was a new metahuman easily mistaken for Batman lurking around Gotham. 

Bruce’s lip twisted. At least Gordon’s limp was no longer noticeable. It had been nerve-racking, watching his young family clustered around his hospital bed and realizing that, had Bruce arrived on the scene any later, they might have been speaking to a mortician instead of a surgeon. It was a grim reminder that there were consequences to Batman’s failures, and it was rarely Bruce who’d face the worst of them.

He’d left the most complicated problem--Kaznia--for last, when it would have his full attention and when he’d have a more fully-formed plan for pitching to Diana. Or at least, that had been the theory. He was willing to admit that transferring their nuclear material to a location known only to Audrey and her father and substituting decoys in the known, and presumably more easily-compromised, storage facilities was not the most elegant solution he’d ever come up with. He hoped Diana would have a better idea.

Bruce grimaced to himself. At least he wouldn’t run out of things to do while Hal was gone. The trick would be surviving the strategy.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank-you to [foxyk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/foxyk/pseuds/foxyk) for betaing this chapter!

Hal let himself drift into orbit and just stared for a long minute. Ocean-blue, cloud-white, the mottled green and brown of Asia, Africa, Europe. Familiar shapes telling him he was home, that everything was as right as it could be. All of it colliding with the shock and pain of the last six weeks at 1,040 miles an hour.

He’d been so focused on getting back--on getting _away_ , if he was being honest--that he hadn’t stopped to think about actually coming home. How had it never really sunk in how fragile the planet was? He’d thought he’d gotten it, after the first time he’d responded to an emergency that could have wiped an entire culture off the face of the galaxy. He’d been an idiot.

Hal clenched his fists, hard enough that he could feel the ring bite into the sides of his fingers. It had felt heavier, after that mission. Getting to help people, save people even, to stop bank robberies and tow sinking ships back to a safe port and keep maniacs from taking over the world... it had been a privilege. Realizing that he was tasked with literally keeping inhabited planets from spinning off their axes and collapsing in on themselves as well--that the Lantern Corps was all that sometimes stood between entire races and oblivion--had turned it into an unbelievable responsibility, too. 

Now the ring felt like a ten-pound weight chained to his arm, and his brain felt like he’d shorted one too many circuits. He rubbed his face and watched the planet rotate, trying to think around his jangling nerves and the fatigue settling over him like a blanket.

 _Home._

The ring pulsed, reminding him that he barely had enough charge left to keep himself safe, never mind anyone else. Hal wasn’t sure now if he had the juice to make it back to Coast City. He should have taken Tomar-Re up on the offer of a top-up before he’d gone tearing back to Earth. It had been stupid, monumentally so, to brush him off, to the point where Hal was almost surprised Tomar hadn’t tried harder to stop him from leaving. But he hadn’t been able to make himself touch the battery right then, never mind recite the oath, and after the way everything had shaken out, Hal could hardly blame Tomar for backing off when Hal had insisted he was good. Tomar-Re and Sinestro had been friends for a lot longer than Hal had been Sinestro’s protege.

Sinestro….

Hal dug the heels of his palms into his eyes and silently cursed the tears pricking his lids. He had no right to grief, to feelings of betrayal, after he’d failed so many fucking people. He thought of trying to explain everything to Carol, to Tom, and felt like he was choking. There weren’t words for it. 

Except, of course, that there were. He could practically hear Bruce saying them, that clipped, flat tone of his folding the unthinkable into rational terms at the same time it stripped away any reflexive defense. 

Dictator. Tyrant. Power-mad.

Hal’s blood ran cold as he imagined trying to explain everything to Bruce. _So, you remember that emergency on Korugar that resulted in our first date? Turns out it was freedom fighters trying to restore the elected government that Thaal deposed using his unstoppable will-powered super-weapon._

Tom and Carol would be appropriately horrified, but they were still in the habit of expecting normal human failures from him, and they were his friends before they were anything else. They would be worried about him, appalled at what had happened, sure that he’d done his best. 

What would Bruce say? Hal shook himself. What would Bruce even need to say? A glance at the ring still on his hand, a slight curl of the lip, the subtle but clear acknowledgement that Hal had been the one Lantern Sinestro had automatically assumed would fall in behind him. The visible reassessment of the way Hal had pushed hard for the League, that telltale, incremental stiffening of shoulders, spine, and jaw when Bruce decided on complicity instead of stupidity as an explanation for Hal not noticing that he was running errands for a madman.

Hal could still see Thaal’s baffled expression, clear as day, when Hal had called him a maniac and told him to stand down or be put down. It hadn’t even occurred to him that Hal wouldn’t see everything exactly as he did, once he’d explained it. Like if Hal had just been smart enough, they’d have arrived at the same conclusion independently. Like it didn’t even register that he’d turned into a fucking supervillain. There hadn’t even been a trace of gloating when Thaal had run through his discovery of the... what? Giant yellow space-vampire? Concentrated fear-entity? Lovecraftian monster from outside space-time? 

Hal looked at his ring and shivered, still unsure of how much to believe about Sinestro’s story. The flaw in the ring, the yellow-blind weak spot in the Lantern Corps, all because the Guardians had imprisoned something called Parallax in the power source. Imprisoned, and maybe used to boost the batteries. It was completely and utterly batshit, but the Guardians hadn’t laughed it off like he’d expected them to. They’d looked almost worried before they’d tried waving it away as unhinged raving.

And Sinestro’s yellow ring had been real enough. 

_We don’t need the Guardians anymore,_ he’d said, when he thought Hal would sign on the dotted line the second he offered Hal a new ring. _We’ve outgrown them._

 _We can do what needs to be done,_ he’d said, when he’d caught Hal’s expression. _Look around, look at how safe everyone is. Look at the order I’ve brought to my world._

 _They’re misguided, careless with the lives of mortals,_ he’d said, when he’d thought Hal simply needed a little more prodding. _They can’t be trusted. They proved that with the Manhunters._

Hal wasn’t sure what Sinestro was talking about there, wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He thought of Korugar again, and his stomach turned. An advanced alien society, with technology Earth could only dream of, and complicated trade agreements with other worlds, and long-term cultural relationships with their sister-systems, and they’d folded like a house of cards to a single Green Lantern without anyone knowing for months.

His ring pulsed again, more faintly this time. Hal looked for the coast, steeled himself, and aimed for Mount Justice instead. As much as he desperately wanted to comfort himself with Carol and Tom and their reassurances right now, as much as he wanted to see Coast City bustling and noisy and normal, as much as he wanted to put off seeing Bruce’s face when Hal went from colleague to threat, the Justice League needed to be warned. 

Sinestro had been apprehended, transported to Oa, and put on trial. Sinestro had been found guilty, sentenced, and incarcerated. The entire Corps was on high alert and searching for any evidence that there were more yellow rings out there, more corrupted Lanterns. Sinestro had seemed so fucking _sincere_ when he’d told Hal that he was the first, that he’d been chosen to help build a new galactic order. It still didn’t mean anyone was safe from retaliatory strikes, that this hadn’t been the first boulder of a landslide.

Hal didn’t think Sinestro had been playing him when he’d offered a yellow ring and position as second-in-command of a new Corps. He didn’t think Sinestro had been faking it when he’d stared in disbelief and called Hal a fool and given Hal another chance to join him in a bid to take over the galaxy. But then, Hal hadn’t been thinking for the past... year? Two years? However long Thaal had been in the mental free-fall that had precipitated this, however long Hal had been following his orders and watching his back with no clue whatsoever that he was aiding and abetting the biggest threat to the sector. 

Maybe it had even started with the news of Abin Sur’s death, Hal thought. A threat the Guardians hadn’t taken as seriously as they should have had cost Thaal his best friend and brother-in-law, and then he’d had to find out about it by Hal showing up on his doorstep with Abin Sur’s ring on his hand. Of course, that would mean that Hal somehow hadn’t noticed the guy mentoring him had a screw loose the entire time, that the rot went all the way to the root. That every last thing he’d learned from Sinestro was suspect. Hal shivered. 

Regardless, it had been happening right under his nose, and he’d hadn’t fucking noticed. He wasn’t about to roll the dice on his judgment of Sinestro right now.

His hands were shaking by the time he touched down in the hangar, and he tried not to think about how long it had been since he’d slept, since he’d choked down more than a mouthful or two of food. If there was any mercy left in the world, it would be Oliver and Clark on watch. Oliver would be understanding. Oliver would conveniently forget every time Hal had talked about Sinestro with admiration or laughed about some balls-out stunt Sinestro had pulled off or said an upcoming mission would be no sweat with Sinestro taking the lead or grumbled about not living up to Captain Hardass’s sky-high expectations, switching effortlessly to fuck-that-guy mode the second Hal told him what had happened. Clark would be appropriately sympathetic, take his report, and handle everything from there.

 _Anyone but Bruce,_ he thought. Anyone but the guy who’d have seen this coming a mile away and didn’t understand that most people couldn’t. Anyone but the man who saw a lack of paranoia as negligence. Anyone but the one person he couldn’t stand to watch lose faith in him right now.

Naturally, the first sign of life in the whole damn complex was Bruce’s soft tread and a cleared throat, both coming from behind so Hal couldn’t even entertain the wild and fleeting impulse to try for Coast City after all.

He’d made it through the last month and a half; he could make it through this. All he had to do was keep it together. Hal turned, and his eyes met blank white lenses. Blank white lenses, a square jaw slack with shock, and one gauntleted hand already reaching for him.

“ _Hal_.” Bruce’s voice was soft, pitched low, and urgent, and Hal wondered how bad he looked, that Bruce was using his name in uniform like this.

“I’m fine.” Hal said it quickly, spitting it out before Bruce’s concern just made everything worse when he said his piece. “I... I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.” Bruce’s hand curled around his elbow, steadying him, and Hal hadn’t realized he was swaying. He was cold, too; the ring usually took care of thermal shielding. Bruce felt like a radiator at this distance, and it took the last bit of dignity he had not to lean into him and soak up the warmth.

“I’m in one piece, then,” he snapped, hating that he was backpedaling already. Everything he was going to have to tell Bruce, and not only was he already fucking it up, he couldn’t even do it while standing on his own two feet. The last time Bruce touched him, and it was going to be this perfunctory attempt to keep him from eating pavement in an access corridor.

“What happened?” Bruce asked gently.

“Um.” Hal laughed, a short, bitter, truncated thing. Might as well tear off the band-aid. “You remember my CO, Sinestro? He, uh. He kind of completely lost it. Full-bore, intersystem-Josef-Stalin lost it. Decided-1984-was-a-how-to-manual lost it.” He swallowed, and his eyes burned when he remembered the torn looks on the people’s faces, the blatant uncertainty about whether the uniform meant rescue or the loss of all hope. “On his entire homeworld. All those people, and it’s going to take so long for them to recover from this, and it was such a complete disaster. And the Corps might be powered by some elder-god _thing_ , or not, but I don’t exactly know who to trust on that one right now. So I may or may not have joined an alien cult. And--”

Hal closed his eyes, and hot tears rolled down his cheeks, because of course that was what he needed as a final argument. He’d let a borderline utopia get terrorized into submission and then smashed to shit, and he might have a piece of something that made Darkseid look like a door-to-door salesman stashed under his kitchen sink, and the one thing that could possibly improve confessing all of this to Bruce would be breaking down crying over it. 

Then he was being carefully folded against Bruce’s chest, and thick arms were coiling loosely around him, and Bruce’s hand was curling gently around the nape of his neck. Hal took a deep, shuddering breath, buried his face in the crook of Bruce’s shoulder, and tried not to wonder what the fuck was wrong with him that he was coming unspooled so quickly over a hug when he’d been steeling himself for a rejection. 

Hal wrapped his arms around Bruce’s ribs and squeezed tight, and Bruce’s grip on him firmed. Hal’s breath was coming in choked, quiet sobs, and there was no pretending it was anything else. He’d gone numb at some point during Sinestro’s recruitment pitch, the same sort of awful, roaring blank that had set in when he’d seen the nose on his father’s plane dip and the wings wobble and realized that something was unrecoverably wrong with the world. It was fading now, adrenaline and denial ebbing to the point where he could see the pain under it all, and he felt like he was bleeding out. His knees started to buckle, and Bruce pulled more of Hal’s weight against him, propping him up easily.

“Has Sinestro been contained?” Bruce asked, a quiet rumble right in his ear.

“Yeah--” Hal heard the quaver in his voice and shut his mouth with a snap. He was still a Lantern, for however much it was worth at the moment. He was better than this. People relied on him having his shit together. He sucked in a lungful of air and tried again. “The Guardians took custody of him, once we were able to bring him down.”

“And this potential... power-source issue? Is that situation stable?”

Hal didn’t have the energy to do more than nod. Whatever the hell was going on there, it had been going on since before he’d gotten his ring and had no reason to change any time soon.

“Is there anything else we should be aware of at the moment?”

“That’s not enough?” Hal muttered.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Bruce said, relaxing his grip. 

“Don’t.” Hal clung to him, suddenly sure he’d fall on his ass if Bruce let go. How the fuck had he even made it back to Earth in this shape? Had he made a single good decision since he’d told Sinestro to get bent?

Bruce stopped, adjusted how he was supporting Hal, and angled his head back. “We need to get you to medical.”

“I already said I’m not injured,” Hal protested. He could feel every bruise, laceration, and burn he’d racked up, a chorus of twinges calling him a liar. It was aspirin and butterfly-bandage stuff, though, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of sitting through a round of questions about whether this hurt or that hurt when everything fucking hurt. His _soul_ hurt, at this point.

Bruce’s lips pressed into a thin line, and why had Hal ever thought he’d get out of this without an argument? His ring flickered one last time, and his uniform thinned, then vanished completely. 

The finality of it hit him like a bullet. No suit, no mask, no constructs, no nothing. If trouble showed up now, he’d be down to his already-bruised fists and his fogged wits. He laid his cheek on Bruce’s shoulder and closed his eyes, feeling as drained as the ring.

“Can you just take me home?” he asked. “I can’t... I can’t do this, right now. Like this. Please.”

* * *

Hal blinked awake, groaned, and rolled over. He teetered on the edge of his couch for one breathless moment, then flailed and caught himself before he fell, adrenaline shooting through him. He pulled himself upright, his heart pounding in his chest and the blankets tangled around his legs.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Carol said drily. Her bloodshot eyes and the shadows under them belied her tone, and she pushed away from the kitchen table. “Coffee? Breakfast? Another pass at the magic lantern?”

Hal gaped at her and dragged his hand across his chin. “How…?”

He gestured wordlessly at his apartment.

“Did you get home last night?” she asked. He nodded. “Your terrifying boyfriend texted me and asked me to please bring the battery to the airfield.”

Hal refrained from pointing out that that didn’t explain anything besides how Carol was involved and how he’d gotten back to Coast City.

“So in retrospect, I’m not sure why I was surprised when a seven-foot-tall fucking _wall of shadow_ carrying _your unconscious body_ stepped into my fucking waiting room. I mean, what else could I have possibly expected?” Carol polished off the contents of a mug, then refilled it. She shook her head and fixed one for him. “Did Sinestro really…?”

“Yeah,” Hal said quietly.

“Jesus Christ.” She brought him his mug and settled onto the couch beside him. He leaned against her, and she threw her arm across his back and pulled him close. “I’m sorry, Hal.”

“Yeah, me too.” His fingers curled around the warm ceramic, the ring clinking against it. He could feel the power contained within it, a comfort and a worry twisted up together. “I don’t even remember charging the ring.”

“You wouldn’t,” she said, looking away.

“Um.” Hal sipped the coffee and tried to think of what that expression could signify. He hadn’t seen Carol look embarrassed in years.

“You were pretty much out cold,” Carol told him. “Tom didn’t buy it when Batman--is it weird to call him that? Does he have a normal-person codename like Shayera does?”

Tom had been there, too. Hal let another mouthful of coffee sit on his tongue. Carol and Tom had brought him home, dragged him upstairs, and tucked him into bed on the couch. Hopefully. Bruce had carefully-considered opinions about the security risk of accompanying them in costume, he was sure.

“Shayera’s her real name, because she could give a good god-damn who knows,” Hal sighed. Anybody looking to start shit with her world or family over a grudge with her would have to find them first, and given how hard Shayera was already looking with no luck, she’d probably buy them a beer before electro-macing them into the nearest star. “Just call him B.”

“Not much better.” Carol made a face. “Anyway. Tom didn’t entirely believe him when he said you weren’t physically injured, that’s how out of it you were. But neither one of us wanted to grab the smelling salts or trying slapping you awake with him hovering right there, because he’s terrifying. I always thought you were hamming it up a little when you talked about that part.” She set her cup on the table. “Are you sure he doesn’t have powers? It seems like he _should_ have powers.”

“Carol,” he prodded gently.

“There’s not a dignified way of putting this,” she admitted. “Between the shape you were in and what he told us about what happened, and the ring having some auto-defenses if it comes down to it, we weren’t really comfortable with it not being charged like that, so. Uh. I held your hand up to the lantern like you do, and Tom stood behind you and did his best impression of you while reciting the oath. And it either worked, or the battery decided to humor us, or. I don’t know.” She let her head rest against his. “Was that even the right thing to do? B said there might be something off with the power source.”

“Yeah. I don’t know.” Hal flexed his hand and looked at the ring. It didn’t seem any different than it had yesterday, or a year ago. “Depends on whether Sinestro was ten or twenty pounds of crazy packed in a five-pound bag, I guess.” His brain caught up with what she’d asked, and he nudged her shoulder. “You did good. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve friends like you two.”

Carol snorted softly. “I’m going to leverage that into feeding you an entire plate of scrambled eggs and toast in a minute. Don’t think I won’t.”

Hal’s stomach clenched at the thought of food. “I’m not hungry.”

“I know you’re not,” she said. “You’re never hungry when you’re upset like this. But you’re down ten pounds--at least, Hal, don’t make that face--and you didn’t have much extra padding to start with.” She dropped her hand and ran her palm down his spine. “Am I wrong in not expecting you to park it and recuperate for the next few days?”

“I…” He should. He knew he should. He’d pretty much collapsed on Bruce, and then he’d been too out of it to register Carol and Tom carrying him home, and even Wally would flat-out call him an idiot for trying to climb back in the saddle in the shape he was in right now. He was tapped out, mentally and physically. But he’d also been gone almost two months, and he couldn’t even imagine what had happened while he’d been in another sector getting his ass kicked by the guy who’d taught him every move he knew.

“Come on, Hal,” Carol said, pouncing as soon as she saw real indecision in his eyes. “You look like you’ve been dragged through hell backwards. I was about ready to call an ambulance, I swear. And B said he’d let you know if he found anything.”

“If he found anything?” Hal repeated blankly.

“He said he had some things to look into. He told us to call him if anything seemed hinky with you, and that he’d call if he found anything, full stop.” She got to her feet and made her way into the kitchen. “Neither of us really wanted an explanation right that second, so you’ll have to ask him if you want to know what he meant by that.”

Hal leaned back against the cushions, let his head rest on the back of the couch, and closed his eyes. What the hell had he babbled at Bruce before the ring had finally turned off? It was fuzzy around the shock of his brain deciding that it was time to finally melt out his ears now that he was someplace where it wouldn’t result in immediate death, but clearly he’d gotten across the basics of Sinestro and Parallax, if Bruce had then passed that on to Carol. 

Hal frowned. If he was Bruce, what would he have done with that information?

Hal opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. Gone looking for more information about how the batteries operated, that’s what he’d have done. 

Which left precisely one possible source of intel, didn’t it? Bruce would be fighting with Clark’s fortress by now, trying to badger the AI into giving up the goods just to get rid of him. He should probably apologize to Clark for whatever irreplaceable family heirlooms got caught in the crossfire. 

Hal grimaced. He hadn’t even been awake, and he might have precipitated a disaster. He was an interstellar wrecking ball at this point. Korugar, Krypton, the Corps...

He ran his thumb over the ring’s band and wondered if it was a moot point. Maybe the Corps had already been broken, and he simply hadn’t realized it, had been too caught up in the excitement of flying and alien civilizations and being a hero to look too closely at who was handing him that kind of power. In retrospect, being the guy with the strongest will on the planet wasn’t the greatest qualifier for wielding a tool of this magnitude, was it? Maybe if he’d taken a page from Bruce’s book earlier, lifted the rock for a good look underneath, he wouldn’t have been caught with his pants down when the ugliness had started to show.

Or maybe, he thought, he’d have ignored it all and had that much harder a time looking at himself in the mirror on bad mornings. What had he done before the ring that amounted to a damned thing compared to what he’d done _with_ it? The best he’d been able to claim before Abin Sur had passed the mantle was that a handful of soldiers had died instead of hundreds of civilians. The ring meant he could shut down a battle--stop a whole war if he needed to--with most everyone still able to walk away afterward. The idea of giving that up was like ripping off a limb.

The sound of eggs cracking against a bowl brought his attention back to the kitchen.

“Not to question your culinary integrity, but if you’re going to insist on feeding me, it should probably be something that hasn’t been moldering in my fridge for two months,” he said. 

He could almost hear Carol rolling her eyes. “Since when do we not keep your fridge cleaned out when you’re away?”

This wasn’t the longest he’d been off-planet, but he’d expected the long trips before. He’d been able to give some warning, make arrangements, dispose of his perishables, pull some cash to make sure nobody was out of pocket covering his day-to-day bullshit. He hadn’t meant to dump it all on them. Hal winced.

“Tom ran to that convenience store on the corner before losing the coin-toss about who had to open shop. Eggs, bread, milk, and a small mountain of processed garbage that you shouldn’t be eating but I promise not to judge you if you do,” Carol continued, raising her voice to carry over the clatter of the whisk.

“I’ll pay him back as soon as I can hit an ATM,” Hal promised. “Depending on how Oa decides they feel about keeping on the guy personally trained by Darth Vader, I might be logging a lot more hours than usual at the strip, too.”

 _Actually work some of the hours you’re paying me for_ , he didn’t say, and she looked like she’d bit into a lemon.

“Look, I don’t think that’s something you need to worry about for a couple months, minimum,” she said. She poured the eggs into the skillet, and Hal finished his coffee. He didn’t have it in him to play guessing games at the moment.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“Because your idiot-billionaire buddy dumped nine grand into your checking account on the first of the month,” Carol snapped. Hal rubbed his chin. No need to guess who she was talking about, at least. “Which on the one hand is great, because hey, free money, but on the other hand, he didn’t say anything about it to anyone, so I about had a heart attack when I figured out who exactly it was from, because I thought... I thought something had happened. That the League had gotten word, and the word wasn’t good.” 

She turned and grabbed at the spice rack, not quite fast enough for Hal to miss the pain that flashed across her face. Three different kinds of pepper wound up in the scramble, and the smell of the eggs cooking was working just enough magic on his appetite that he hoped she hadn’t overdone it.

“And, really? Is every reporter on that entire coast blind?” Carol demanded. “He’s one of two frigging guys under seventy wearing a beard like that in the entire city, and nobody’s figured it out yet?”

“I get the feeling there’s not much interest in who the Green Arrow is,” Hal offered. “I’m sorry he worried you.”

Carol shrugged, her shoulders jerking sharply. 

“I didn’t mean to--” She took a breath and started over. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t as bad as that. It took Tom all of five seconds to find that dorky little card with the bat on it in your sock drawer, and another thirty after that to get a conservative no on anyone having heard from you. He called back later that night to apologize on behalf of the League and tell me that, so far as was possible to determine, there was no discernible cause for any particular concern.”

She gave the eggs a particularly vicious scrape. “Bastard probably knew then, didn’t he? I should have picked up on the phrasing. He sounded like a banker trying not to plead the Fifth. ‘I have no recollection of that conversation.’”

Hal pursed his lips and considered the blatant, unfeigned surprise on Bruce’s face. Not to mention it would have been the one time in Bruce’s life he’d thought to lie to someone to spare their feelings. 

The timing was off, too.

“The first was what, a week ago?” he asked. She nodded. “The Guardians are trying to keep a lid on this, for all the good it’s going to do. Maybe chatter’s just now picking up to the point where someone on Earth would hear about it, but I’d give it another month before anyone on channels we’d catch here are saying Sinestro’s gone over to the dark side. My guess is that was him being, well. Him.” He caught Carol’s look and bit his lip, trying to come up with a way of explaining it that didn’t make Bruce sound like a feral robot. “He doesn’t say things are going to be fine unless he knows they’re going to be fine.”

“Please tell me there’s more to this than you being in love with that jet,” she said, grabbing a pair of plates from the cupboard.

“How’d you even figure it out? I mean, it’s not like I said.” He’d specifically refrained from saying, if it came down to it. He’d spent enough time griping to both of them about everything from Bruce’s demeanor to Bruce’s penchant for taking unnecessary risks that he figured he was in for at least double that in teasing if he turned around and copped to lusting after him.

“You’ve been seeing someone in the League. Specifically, a guy in the League.” Carol shoved a pair of bread slices into the toaster. “Robin Hood’s straight. Not the Martian, or you’d have demanded props for finally scoring with an alien. Merman and Super-Everything both have girlfriends. Not Speed Racer, or he wouldn’t be stupid-flirting with that sportscaster on live tv every other week. Lightning-Guy’s like an honorary nephew or something, for all that he doesn’t look that much younger than you. So who does that leave? The guy whose card you keep next to your passport and dog tags.”

Carol filled his plate and handed it to him, and her eyes softened when she looked up at him from across the counter.

“The guy who acted like it was physically painful to let go of you, even when he called us specifically to take care of you.”

Hal blushed and glanced down at the food. “Yeah, well. Boyfriend might be pushing it.”

Especially after Bruce had had time to go over all the angles and start wondering if Hal might be compromised. He was sure Bruce had a million and one reasons they were a bad idea already tallied up and stacked on the scale, just like Carol’d had way back when he’d asked her if she wanted to give them a second shot.

Carol tilted her head and crossed her arms, and Hal poked at the eggs with his fork. She wasn’t going to let him get away with not eating, which he could hardly fault her for since she was right about him needing to. Meals had been few and far between until they’d made it back to Oa, and then the alien cuisine that wasn’t great to begin with had turned to ashes in his mouth every time he caught a suspicious look from someone he’d counted as a friend or a careful equivocation from the Guardians about the origin of the batteries’ yellow impurity. He’d felt hammered thin even before Sinestro’s sentence was passed down and the formal interviews about the Parallax claims had started up.

“He let you fly it yet?” she asked.

Hal scooped a mound eggs onto the toast and shoved it into his mouth to avoid answering. It didn’t count if it was an emergency, did it?

“Total boyfriend,” Carol said, starting on the clean-up.

“I feel like there are more important things to talk about than my love life right now,” Hal muttered, covering his mouth.

Carol gave him a long look. “Did you want to talk about any of them?”

“Ah.” Hal swallowed. Carol extended get out of jail free cards about as often as she did things she was embarrassed over. He wondered what it said about him that, just this once, he didn’t want to take her up on it. Usually it was like getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar when she got on him about avoiding something that was going to blow up in his face if he didn’t deal with it. “When I first got the ring, did I come off like I...” He sighed and waved his hand vaguely. “Should I have paid more attention? Been less, I don’t know, eager?”

“Jesus, Hal.” Carol leaned against the counter and rubbed her eyes. “What would you even have paid more attention to? It’s not like you could hop on the internet and start researching alien civilizations. That Von guy was your first red flag in how many years of dealing with these people? Everything else has been saving planets and stopping wars and getting hassled by your COs for not living up to your potential. It’s not like they’re in the habit of cutting Lanterns any slack when they fuck up or jerk people around or blow off their training. From what you’ve told me, at length, pretty much every time you get back from a mission, they seem pretty responsible about who gets to keep their rings and how the Corps conducts itself.”

Hal mulled it over as he ate, and Carol tore open a package of chocolate mini-donuts.

“You don’t eat junk food,” he reminded her, taking one. She glared at him and shoved half of one in her mouth.

“I don’t go running around with your power battery at a stranger’s say-so, either,” she said after a minute. “You don’t look at your ring like it might turn into a snake. Tom doesn’t obsessively review security footage. I think we’re all through the looking glass today. Might as well make the most of it.”

“Tom’s obsessively reviewing security footage?” Hal asked, puzzled.

She shrugged. “My phone keeps chirping at me about non-admin access, and it’s his login. He’s probably worried about who might have seen the damn batplane taxiing down our runway.”

“B’s careful.”

Carol raised her eyebrows and finished her donut.

“Okay, B’s paranoid,” he corrected. “He knows how much sensitive hardware passes through this place. He’d assume people have eyes on it. I’m pretty sure he’s got at least three different stealth systems in that thing.”

“Speaking of him being paranoid, you might want to text him to let him know you’re not still comatose,” she said. “That kind of personality, he’s likely operating under the assumption that you’re already dead and will be pleasantly surprised to hear from you.”

Hal grimaced. “He’s not that much of a pessimist. I’m a little surprised he didn’t ask for hourly status updates, though.”

“He did. Well, not hourly, but you get the idea.” Carol coughed, and Hal was surprised to see her cheeks turn pink. “I may have told him to shove it up his ass.”

“You didn’t.” She had, though, he could see it on her face. He’d have paid good money to have been awake for that. Carol was a force to be reckoned with when she finally lost her temper over something.

“I was maybe still a little mad about the deposit scare, and seeing you like that made me want him out of there post-haste, and I may in fact have yelled at him a little.” She brushed imaginary crumbs off the counter she’d only wiped down a minute ago, suddenly all business. “If you could tell him I apologize for my behavior the next time you see him, I’d appreciate it.”

Hal chuckled, feeling punchdrunk. He was still bone-tired, and the food in his belly might as well have been a glass of warm milk washing down an ambien. Carol had talked some of the edge off, and all he wanted now was to curl up and go back to sleep for another twelve hours. “You know, the grown-up thing to do--”

“Don’t you dare,” Carol snapped. Her blush deepened.

“--would be to tell him yourself,” Hal finished. He managed a smile at her chagrin, and she scoffed.

“This is hardly the same thing as accidentally hitting on a client’s wife, and you know it,” she said. “Besides, I get the feeling he’s not really into hugging it out. And if he can keep working with the Gotham police after they had snipers ready to pull the trigger on him, this is probably water off a duck’s back anyway.”

“Uh.” Hal didn’t know what she was talking about, which meant his imagination began filling in the possibilities in grim and loving detail. _Goddammit, Bruce._

Carol shrugged. “I may have spent the last six hours alternating between checking your pulse every time you stopped snoring and googling your boyfriend. Which might be a little invasive, yes, but he doesn’t make national news on a weekly basis like Wonder Woman or Superman do. I was hoping to find more charity appearances and keys to the city and fewer fights with murder-clowns on top of rollercoaster tracks in abandoned amusement parks. I mean, why does the city even _have_ those? Bulldozing them would pay for itself in SWAT and EMT savings the first year.”

“Okay, that’s it,” Hal sighed, getting to his feet. “You win. I think I need to not be conscious for another day or two.”

“Hal?” She caught the shift in his tone, and he shook his head.

“I’ll…” He ran his fingers through his hair. “We’ll talk later, okay? And thanks, Carol. For everything. I don’t know what the hell my life would look like without you and Tom, but I know it wouldn’t be pretty.”

He could see she was visibly restraining herself from asking again, and for a second he was afraid she was going to push him on it. Then she hugged him wordlessly, turned him around, and gave him a gentle shove toward the bedroom.

“I’ll wake you if anyone calls,” she promised.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With much gratitude to [foxyk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/foxyk/pseuds/foxyk) for betaing this chapter!

Hal was already drifting out of an unpleasant dream in which Bruce dissolved into shadow every time Hal reached for him when Tom knocked softly on the bedroom door. Hal scrubbed at his face and climbed out of bed, stumbling a little when Tom opened the door and the light from the hallway hit his eyes.

“Hal?” Tom asked softly. He took a step back and grimaced. “Oh, dammit. Sorry, I didn’t realize you were awake.”

“Get the light, would you?” Hal groaned, shielding his face. He squinted and blinked a few times when Tom did, but at least it was an even, blinding glow instead of a white lance boring straight through his skull. He couldn’t tell if he’d slept too long or not long enough, but he definitely hadn’t slept well. Everything from Carol and Tom trading off babysitting shifts to a backfiring delivery truck had brought him out of a murky half-doze just long enough to register how big a mess he’d made of things before he slipped back under.

Tom held up Hal’s phone. “Moneybags called. I didn’t pick up in time.”

“Thanks,” Hal said, taking it from him. Oliver was probably either leaving a long, rambling voicemail or transferring another nine grand into his checking account by now.

“Coffee or water?” Tom asked, one measuring glance telling him all he needed to know about how Hal was feeling.

“Water first, then coffee.” Hal hit the call button and rubbed his eyes. “Please. Thank you.”

Tom came back with a pitcher of water and a glass, then couldn’t help reaching up and ruffling Hal’s hair on the way out. He seemed more worried than Carol had been, probably because there was less anger papering over it, and Hal was torn between wanting to say everything would be okay so he’d stop and wanting to wallow in it. Hal had the feeling sympathy was going to be in short supply once he filled everyone in on what, exactly, had happened. Tom pulled the door closed behind him and Hal lowered himself back onto the bed, grateful for the privacy.

Oliver picked up on the first ring. “ _Dude_. I was just leaving a message. Are you okay? Do you need anything? When are visiting hours?”

“I’m--” _\--fine_. Hal stopped, wondering at his own kneejerk response. This wasn’t Bruce; he didn’t have anything to prove to Ollie. “Physically, I’m fine. Visiting hours are going to have to wait for a day or two though, man. I’m tapped out.”

“Yeah, yeah, totally understandable, no worries,” Oliver said in a rush, and Hal could practically see him nodding too fast and going jittery and tense on the other end of the line.

“I promise you, I’m okay,” he said firmly. “It’s nothing a few days of R-and-R won’t fix. I’ll be by as soon as I’m up to it. As for me needing anything, I actually find myself somehow in the weird position of having too much money. Mysteriously.”

“You know.” Oliver cleared his throat. “I’ve found that, in irregular employment situations, you can never really have too much of a cushion to fall back on--”

“Ollie.” Hal closed his eyes and wondered if it would be easier if he just caved and flew to Star City to have this conversation in person. Oliver tended to believe things only after he could see them when he was expecting bad news. 

Hal ran his thumb over the ring’s band and shivered. No, it would definitely not be easier.

“Look,” Oliver said. Hal could hear him breathing through the pause and waited until he’d found the words he was clearly groping for. “You were gone a long time, okay? And B was his usual incredibly unhelpful self, all ‘we have no evidence of _this_ ’ and ‘we can only have confidence in _that_ ’ and blah blah blah. You know how he gets when he’s stonewalling. He wouldn’t say what you took off to go handle or when you’d be home, just that he was sure the Corps had your back and that you knew what you were doing. I mean, he wouldn’t even tell the Boy Scout, that’s how big a dick he was being over this.”

“He couldn’t say, because I didn’t tell him, because I didn’t know,” Hal said. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he’d been untangling himself from Bruce in a hotel bed, the ring pulsing out a call to arms. He couldn’t even wish for a time machine, not really--the problem had already been there, he just hadn’t known about it yet.

“Okay, but there are ways to communicate that information that aren’t dickish and alarming,” Oliver huffed. “Did he use them? No, he did not. And you’d only just gotten back on your feet! I know damn well you were scheduled for a couple of weeks of physical therapy after that cast came off, because you spent that entire first week after it got put on carping about it.”

Hal scratched at the fading scar on his chest and swallowed a sigh. Oliver had been worried, and going stir-crazy in the absence of news, and throwing a stack of cash at the situation had somehow seemed like an acceptable response, because it was Oliver.

“If you think about it, I was saving money by making sure your bills were covered,” he continued. “You know how much it takes to just trawl through space with a ‘have you seen this guy?’ banner hanging off the back of a ship until you find somebody? A surprising amount. Way more than four figures. And that’s even before I come back from months in space to find somebody hostile-takeovering my business and freezing my assets and tossing all my favorite stuff in a dumpster and lighting it on fire out of spite. Again. Plus all my pictures of you in action looked stupid when I blew them up to banner-size.”

“Joyriding in the Javelin was your Plan B, here?” Hal asked. He winced at the thought of what sort of reports would get generated back on Oa if Oliver ever did something like that and managed to get someone’s attention. Hal would never hear the end of it. 

He let his eyes rest on the ring’s insignia. Assuming he still wanted to be a Lantern. Assuming the Lanterns still wanted him.

“Of course not. It was Plan A, but somebody thought it was a good idea to give Dracula veto-power over flight plans, and he said no.”

Hal snorted. How hard was Bruce probably kicking himself right now for insisting that Hal could be trusted to handle his own shit? Bruce having confidence in other people’s abilities was such a rarity that Hal had never seen him disappointed in it. Hal’s chest ached in a way that had nothing to do with the scar running across it. It figured that _this_ would be the way he found out what that looked like.

“Thank you for listening, at least,” Hal sighed. The last thing he needed right now were any more complicating factors. There was a too-long pause on the other end, and Hal reassessed how big a fight it had probably been. “Should I just say thank you for not doing it and leave it at that?”

“I’m not copping to anything here, but in the event that you ever need to jack the Javelin, be advised that he had Ted Kord install the equivalent of a distributor cap just so he’d have something to yank out and use as a paperweight while pointedly ignoring the fact that founding League members could be rotting in space-jail or in dire need of assistance on alien hell-planets or--” Oliver broke off, and Hal swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat. Oliver sounded shaky when he picked back up. “So I guess what I’m getting at is that like hell I’m taking the money back, buddy. You’re six weeks behind on work that actually pays bills instead of just making sure we all still have a universe to live in, and I’m not gonna miss it.”

“You know I’m not out there on my own, right? There’s an entire Corps, right behind me,” Hal said quietly.

“Which is great, unless one of them’s only there because they’re waiting to stick a knife in your back,” Oliver snapped. “Speaking of which, I don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting to punch the douchebag in question right in his elongated purple mug?”

“Don’t even joke,” Hal breathed. He shuddered at the thought of the damage Sinestro could cause if he got loose, made another yellow ring, and took a swing at Earth. The consequences of Hal’s failure were already great enough; the possibility of them being compounded was horrifying. 

Hal’s stomach clenched when he considered much time he’d spent running his mouth about how great Earth was and the minutiae of his life out of uniform and what the League was up to. He’d been trying to make friends, to break the thin-lipped seriousness with which Sinestro approached everything, to irritate him into showing some sign of a personality. 

Sinestro had never seemed like he was doing more than weathering it, waiting for Hal to shut up so he could start back in on whatever lesson or stratagem or bit of Corps business he’d wanted to talk about in the first place, but then Hal had never thought he had a reason to be careful about what he said around another Lantern. He’d practically handed Thaal a roadmap in the event that he ever got a chance at revenge. Hal rubbed his face and tried not to remember every single time he’d hassled Bruce over his flat refusal to engage in small talk on the job.

“Sorry, man, I didn’t mean it like that,” Oliver said, subdued. “It’s just… fuck that guy, you know?”

“Believe me, yes, I know.” However inappropriate a form Oliver’s support occasionally took, at least it was unflagging. “How’d you even get my bank account number, anyway?” 

The question had been nagging at him since the night before, when he’d tried to sleep and found himself tossing and turning until he’d finally given up and started searching for news on Gotham’s favorite bat-themed vigilante. As close as they’d grown over their time with the League, Hal had never actually told Oliver his last name, never mind who he banked with.

“Um.” Oliver sucked at his teeth. “You remember that hot chick with the fishnets and the sonics that B’s been circling for the last half a year?”

“Not exactly how I’d put it, but yeah.” Bruce had been as cagey and defensive as he ever was about someone else operating in Gotham. That he’d eventually calmed down after seeing her in action enough times and digging into her past until he hit bedrock was as close to a seal of approval as he was capable of handing out. “Canary, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. So I thought about what you said, about running background checks on my girlfriends, and I figured two birds with one stone, right?”

“Really?” Hal asked.

“That’s not even scratching the surface,” Oliver assured him. “I could literally write a bird-themed joke-book right now, and not a single one of them would get this lady to crack a smile. Anyway, I figured, if B’s trying to pick her up, you know she’s clean, and she’s a sleuth, so there’s the cold opening. I need some sweet detective skills to keep my mild-mannered alter-ego from getting assassinated, she could use some equipment subsidies. We help each other out, and in the meantime I’m spending a lot of time with her while being my charming self.”

“You got someone I don’t know--and with whom you’re associating primarily to what, aggravate B?--to look up my personal information?” Hal demanded, blinking. Even Oliver couldn’t be that obliviously inconsiderate.

“What? Jesus H. Christ. No, of course not,” Oliver sputtered. “No. She’s just like, I don’t know. Almost as incapable of fucking around on a job as B is. It was like getting hit by a bus. I might have literally signed a pact with the devil. Eventually it was just easier to go limp and let the learning happen. I’m now, and I quote, the best detective I’m capable of being.”

“Ouch.”

“I tell myself she meant it as a compliment,” Oliver said acidly. “Anyway, I looked everything up myself. Turns out there aren’t that many Carols who employ top-flight test pilots, never mind Carols who employ top-flight test pilots in or around Coast City, and you guys’s circa five-years-ago staff page is still in the Wayback Machine, so there’s your full legal name. I figured either you’ve got a credit union through work or you’re still using the Air Force, because you’re not an idiot.”

“Tell me you didn’t hack a federal credit union,” Hal groaned.

“I have no memory of any such act.”

Hal could hear him fumbling with a bottle, then the telltale hiss of a cap being popped.

“Little early for a beer, isn’t it?” Hal asked.

“Technically, no. Late night, haven’t been to bed yet, you know the drill,” Oliver told him. “Also not a beer. Artisanal sarsaparilla, and please don’t ask what makes it artisanal. I made that mistake when an old friend asked me to invest in his new microbrewery and it was just two hours of white noise. Unless you can’t sleep, in which case a long, complicated, and unnecessarily-nostalgic explanation of a basic concept might be just what the doctor ordered. You want a case or two for your brother’s kids? I’m currently getting paid back in soda because the cash flow’s all going to expansion and payroll, and it’s good, but I feel like there’s only so much sarsaparilla a modern, emotionally-healthy adult can drink.”

Hal shook his head. Of course Oliver’s test drive of his newfound cyberstalking skills hadn’t been confined to Hal’s finances.

“You put together an entire file on me, didn’t you?” he asked.

“You were gone for almost two fucking months with no itinerary, reports back, or way to call if you needed something,” Oliver protested. “I couldn’t help it. Plus your nieces and nephews are adorable. I just want to pinch their cheeks or give them all Ivy League scholarships or something.”

“Please under no circumstances do anything of the sort.” Hal would never hear the end of it if Jack found out what had happened, or why. “You have any idea how closely a DA’s records are scrutinized during election season?”

“I’m a billionaire philanthropist with a soft spot for incorruptible public servants,” Oliver said immediately.

“I’d ask why that was already in the can, but I’m too tired to deal with the answer.” 

“I did an idiot buddy of mine a solid one time and donated to a DA poised to clean up Gotham. One year and twelve fluid ounces of acid to the face later, I’m officially on the record as one of Two-Face’s biggest campaign contributors,” Oliver told him. “Whenever I sit down for some chief executive assclown interview with a reporter worth the name, it’s guaranteed to show up as a gotcha question for the gag-reel.”

“See? I’ve got absolutely nothing to say to that.” Hal ran his fingers through his hair. He wanted to turn his phone off and go back to sleep. He also wanted to not wake up to Tom knocking on the bedroom door because half the League was loitering on the mat and would Hal please deal with it before the building super got called. “Did B fill everyone in, or just the people who’ve been trying to steal spaceships to organize a search party?”

“B?” Oliver asked. “Boy Scout called a meeting and gave us the rundown. When’d you run into B?”

“First thing,” Hal said finally. “Whatever you guys got, it was by way of him.”

Hal chewed his lip and tried to think. Bruce had probably gone straight to Clark after dropping him off with Carol and Tom, maybe asked for an intercession with the Fortress of Solitude’s operating system. It made sense for him to delegate handling the League, too, given how often Bruce tried to bow out of anything requiring emotional finesse. Or maybe this was Bruce recusing himself, quietly disappearing until he could corroborate Hal’s story. It wouldn’t be the first time Bruce had watched someone go from upstanding citizen to a mortal threat in the blink of an eye, would it? A genuinely disturbing number of Bruce’s frequent flyers had been perfectly ordinary-seeming people until they suddenly weren’t, and every ordinary-seeming goal and ordinary-seeming plan transformed into a single-minded focus on making sure the whole city paid for it.

“Seriously? Please tell me he was at least halfway human about it,” Oliver demanded. “You got to take a nap before he started in with the third degree, right?”

 _He carried me bridal-style to his jet and flew me home._ It would be worth saying it just to hear Oliver’s reaction, if only Hal was sure he wouldn’t be choking on it in a day or two when Bruce had come to whatever decision he had to be weighing right now. 

It was hard not to interpret the radio silence as a bad sign, whatever status reports Bruce had tried to talk Carol into sending him. Or maybe that had been an attempt to keep tabs on Hal while Bruce investigated. The Guardians had been a little less subtle about it, while they’d been combing through the wreckage left in Thaal’s wake. A full half the other Lanterns who’d stopped by his quarters to ask how he was holding up were people he’d never worked with and couldn’t have picked out of a line-up.

“It was fine, Ollie,” Hal said, suddenly bone-tired.

“I could... well, I mean obviously I can’t kick his ass, but I can yell at him until he regrets being such an asshole,” Oliver offered.

“It was fine,” Hal repeated, putting every ounce of conviction he had left into his voice. “I’m going back to sleep. I will call you when I wake up. Please don’t start any fights with anyone about anything until then. Okay?”

“If you _insist_ ,” Oliver scoffed, then sighed. “It’s good to have you back, dude. Call me when you’re up to seeing people.”

“You’ll be the first to know,” Hal promised. He ended the call and scrolled through his history, just in case he’d somehow missed Bruce texting, calling, _communicating_. Nothing. 

Hal shook himself and put the phone away. That was all it was: nothing. Bruce would call when he found something worth calling about, and Bruce would decide what he was going to do once he had all the facts, and Hal driving himself crazy over it wasn’t going to change that.

* * *

Bruce willed himself to relax and focused on breathing evenly. The smell of the pizza in his hands was suffocating, and the dingy elevator walls felt like they were closing in on him, and he couldn’t remember why he hadn’t taken the stairs. The twinge in his knee and hip--fading mementos from the Shayera-mediated disaster with Isley--were nothing compared to this _stillness_ , the roiling in his gut that had nothing to do with the food he was holding or the mechanical lurch of the box he was riding in. He’d have been moving, at least, if he’d taken the stairs. He’d have something to blame for the way his heartbeat was ticking up and something to do with the nervous energy tensing his muscles.

The cautious optimism of the news he had for Hal felt like the rimshot to a grim joke. He’d spent weeks trying to convince himself that Hal had been fine only to find out otherwise by having Hal materialize in front of him like a ghost, underweight, battered, and hollow-eyed. Hal had looked as close to beaten as Bruce had ever seen him, and infinitely closer than Bruce had ever wanted to. The whole thing still felt like a nightmare. Hal’s ring had failed, leaving him grounded and helpless in the face of his physical exhaustion. Bruce hadn’t had the strength to insist on a proper exam with Hal’s plea for home and the questionable safety of the power battery ringing in his ears, and his emotions had overridden good sense without so much as a token struggle. He’d paid for it the entire flight to Coast City, with Hal so much insensible cargo and the relentless catalogue of every potentially fatal, undiagnosed complication from which Hal could be suffering on repeat in his head.

That Hal’s pulse had remained strong and steady, his pupillary response good, his temperature normal, had let Bruce offer Ferris and Kalmaku a reassurance he hadn’t felt when they’d reacted to Hal’s state. Hal had been in good hands, with people he trusted implicitly. The only thing Bruce could do for Hal at that point had been to find him an answer to his questions about the ring, and still it had been… difficult to let go. 

Bruce swallowed at the memory. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been so torn between what he wanted and what he knew was necessary. Even now, here, like this--it could have been taken care of with a phone call or an email. He could have passed along what he knew and gotten back to work. The remaining lead was thin, but it was there. He should be running it down, should be compiling every scrap of evidence available for analysis. However Hal had defined himself before he’d gotten the ring, it was a part of him now, folded as thoroughly into his being as his courage and his loyalty. To imagine Hal without it was to imagine an eagle with its wings clipped. He deserved to have any fear raised about its origins addressed as soon as humanly possible, and instead Bruce was here.

The elevator door pinged and slid open, shimmying in its tracks, and Bruce forced himself to uncoil. He would hand over the pizza, quiet the dread running riot over his nerves, and return to being useful. It wouldn’t take long, just a brief moment or two, just enough to convince his subconscious that Hal was not, in fact, in the ICU and Ferris had simply elected not to tell him, just enough to soothe the sudden eruption of worry when he’d realized that Ferris and Kalmaku being absent could as easily be explained by an emergency as Hal’s desire for a few hours of privacy. Just a small indulgence of what Hal would doubtless call his paranoia, and then he could focus properly.

Bruce knocked on Hal’s door and waited. After what felt like an eternity, Hal opened the door and stared at him blankly, then stepped aside to let Bruce in as if he was on autopilot. Bruce focused on the fact that Hal’s color was better and his posture straighter and the lines around his eyes less deeply etched and tried to ignore the way Hal didn’t look even slightly pleased to see him. Just a brief moment, he told himself.

Hal crossed one arm over his chest and rubbed the back of his neck, and even if Bruce hadn’t known him well enough to tell it was discomfort, the way Hal wouldn’t meet his eyes was a self-contained message.

“I thought you might want something to eat,” Bruce said, the words a pointless declaration of an equally pointless decision. 

It had seemed like the thing to do, some small token he could offer a man who’d been away from home for so long, something to remedy the painfully obvious lack of regular meals. With Hal acting like Bruce was the last thing he wanted to see right now, it stood out as the utterly ridiculous gesture it was, a bribe offered in exchange for Hal accepting his presence when he clearly preferred to lick his wounds in peace. 

The absence of his two closest friends should have been all the warning Bruce had needed, but he’d been too caught up in his own emotional meltdown to interpret it correctly. He lowered the box to the table and considered whether it was too late to retreat and send the email he should have written in the first place. Bruce caught Hal’s guarded look and steeled himself. Of course it was too late, and whatever he’d done to earn this response was being visibly compounded every second he drew it out.

“I may have found something about the ring,” he said. “The Guardians fought a thing called Parallax when it began consuming--or possibly poisoning, the records were unclear on that point--entire systems. Their power source was the only thing capable of keeping it in check, so they used it as a prison. Parallax isn’t being used to fuel the rings, and it’s certainly not an object of veneration. It was apparently only after the Guardians defeated it that the rings were ineffective on yellow objects, so it may be acting as an adulterant or a drain of some sort, but--”

“Bruce,” Hal murmured, looking down at the table between them. “Why are you here?”

Bruce blinked at him and tried not to remember Hal happy, smiling, and asking him if he’d come to Coast City, if it wouldn’t be a hardship, if they could pick up where they’d left off once Hal got back. Right now it felt as if that moment had happened years ago, to someone else. The obvious response, that Bruce had come because he had news and thought Hal might want to hear it, seemed spineless in light of it.

“I wanted to see you,” he said simply. A tissue-thin excuse, maybe, but it was at least the truth.

“You wanted to see me,” Hal echoed, as if he was testing the strength of the words. 

“Yes.”

Hal ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled slowly.

“There’s not much more to the Parallax account,” Bruce said carefully. He still couldn’t read the emotion in Hal’s eyes, though at least now Hal was looking at him instead of anywhere but. Some of the tension seemed to have washed out of Hal’s too-lean frame, and his expression was less shuttered. “It seems to be inert, for the time being, and there doesn’t appear to be a particular danger in the immediate future. The Guardians don’t seem implicated in any unexpected conspiracy or threat. I have another avenue to explore. I don’t expect it to yield much in the short term, but it’s something.” He shifted his weight. “I apologize for coming here without calling. You’re obviously still… I didn’t think.”

“You wanted to see me, to tell me about Parallax in person?” Hal asked, and Bruce was sure there was some piece of the puzzle he was missing, some emotional frequency he wasn’t hearing.

“I wanted to see you, and I thought I should tell you about Parallax in person. You seemed distraught when you explained the situation. I thought the update might help.” Bruce spread his hands slightly. “It should have occurred to me that you were still recuperating. I’m sorry.”

Hal shook his head slowly and laughed to himself. “You’re sorry. Unbelievable.”

“Hal?” Bruce ran through the painfully brief conversation they’d managed before Hal has passed out, trying to pinpoint what might have resulted in this. Or was it something he’d failed to do, some blind spot coming back on him at the worst possible time?

“Sorry, I think I’m just setting a new world record for being wrong about the biggest number of things in one calendar year.” Hal ground the heel of his palm into his forehead and pushed himself back into motion. He was in the kitchen and jerking a cabinet open before Bruce could reconcile the change in his demeanor. “Um. Can you go through the Parallax stuff again? I’m going to be honest, it was mostly white noise.”

“It can wait until you’re better rested,” Bruce said tentatively.

Hal’s bitten-off bark of laughter was enough of an answer on that front, and Bruce frowned. Hal didn’t look like he’d been asleep when Bruce had knocked, but then again it would be difficult to tease that ragged-edged recalibration out of the borderline collapse of the last day. Of course, with the blow Hal had been dealt, he might not have been able to relax enough to rest. How many nights had Bruce spent gnawing over some insoluble problem or some frustrating mystery when he should have been sleeping, when he knew damn well what the lost sleep would cost him once the pieces fell into place, or the time to act finally came?

Hal put a pair of plates on the table and paused, his hand going to his face again, and Bruce laid a hand on his shoulder without entirely meaning to. Bruce realized a split-second after he felt the warmth of Hal’s flesh under his hand that this was not, perhaps, the best move he could have made. Hal didn’t always welcome comfort when he was vulnerable--didn’t always appreciate attention being drawn to it, or being reminded that it was noticeable--and Bruce was less than adept at being comforting. However many walls they’d let down around each other before Hal had left, it was no guarantee that Hal was still comfortable being so unguarded around him now.

It was a testament to his capacity for self-deception, Bruce thought remotely, that he’d been able to convince himself this visit would be a relief. That he’d somehow imagined Hal wouldn’t still be a wreck. That he could offer Hal any reassurance.

Then Hal was turning to him, and Hal was pressing himself against him, and all trace of hesitation was gone. Bruce pulled Hal to him and buried his face in Hal’s hair and breathed him in. Whatever had happened, Hal had made it home. Whatever loss he’d suffered, Hal was still standing. Hal was here, with him, alive and intact. The problem could be addressed, solved, worked around. Bruce could feel Hal softening against him, relaxing into the embrace, holding instead of clinging, and it dawned on him, finally, that Hal had been bracing for bad news. Bruce hugged Hal tighter.

Eventually--too soon, Bruce thought--Hal let go and sat down, half-sprawling in his chair. He still looked dazed, but there was a hope there that Bruce hadn’t seen earlier. Hal pushed a plate at him and flipped open the box.

“Sit down, would you? And I wasn’t kidding,” Hal said, piling half the pie onto his plate in one go. He slid a plate across the table at Bruce, who ignored it. The combination of the pizza’s odor in his face for the entire trip to Hal’s apartment and the stomach-souring apprehension of what he’d find when he got there had put him off olives for the foreseeable future. “I’m going to need all that again, slowly and with bullet points. And please tell me you didn’t break any of Clark’s stuff getting it out of the Fortress AI.”

“Why would I have searched the Fortress’s records? They’re sparse at best, when it comes to Oa,” Bruce said. Krypton’s contact with the Lantern Corps had been spotty, if the data Clark’s parents had seen fit to include was any indication. Aside from letting him verify that the Guardians had, at least over the last few centuries, consistently represented themselves and been accepted as a force for justice and good in the universe when Hal had first started making waves, it hadn’t been much help. Hal arched an eyebrow, the question as obvious as his mouth was full of food. “Miracle and Barda’s Motherbox.”

Both of Hal’s eyebrows climbed at that, and Bruce sighed.

“It’s a reliable source of otherwise-inaccessible information,” he said. “New Genesis also has, unsurprisingly, a significantly longer memory than most other civilizations. They never had direct contact with Parallax, but they had enough information to make a few educated guesses.”

Bruce ran down what he’d found again, elaborating on and citing sources for whatever points made Hal stop chewing and stare at him. He wondered when this had become a valid method of communication between the two of them. The intimacy had a certain lack of dignity to it, but he supposed it was better than blindly groping toward the right answer.

“You got all that out of a Motherbox?” Hal asked finally, eyeing the last slice he’d taken but hadn’t been able to finish like it was mocking him.

“I’m not taking it with me when I leave. You don’t have to eat it in one sitting,” Bruce pointed out gently. Hal looked something approaching sated, though it was hard not to let his gaze linger on those too-defined cheekbones or the dark circles under Hal’s eyes. “And yes. It was very helpful.”

“More helpful than Clark’s computer.”

“It lacks the emotional capacity to take satisfaction in frustrating its user, so that wouldn’t be difficult,” Bruce said, grimacing. There was a peculiarly efficient sort of smugness to the Fortress AI’s failed-query notifications that would never stop irritating him. That Clark insisted he was imagining it didn’t help. Trusting tech that was not only alien but extradimensional shouldn’t have been easier, but then, the Motherbox was designed to forge bonds whenever possible.

“What’d Clark’s computer have to say about Oa? Whenever it was that you asked it.” There was a studied nonchalance to the question that was its own, separate question. Bruce managed a mirthless smile.

“When you started flying around Coast City with an alien device of significant power,” he supplied.

“Naturally.” Hal stuffed the offending, half-eaten piece of pizza back in the box and fixed him with a look. 

“It was a perfectly reasonable precaution,” Bruce said. It wasn’t as if he’d had access to everything Hal had seen, or spoken to any of the administrators, functionaries, and sergeants Hal had dealt with, or known Hal well enough at the time to simply take him at his word. Seeking verification from a second source had been natural, not paranoid.

“And?”

“And, insofar as the Kryptonians made note of them, the Lantern Corps was what you said it was. And yes,” Bruce sighed, “before you ask, it did occur to me that the Guardians may have been working a long con, as it were. It also occurred to me that immortal, invulnerable beings with a near-limitless supply of power could come up with a simpler way to get whatever it was they wanted in that case, and that the most likely scenario is that they are what they say they are.” Bruce glanced at Hal and amended the statement. “What you’ve seen them being.”

“So, Parallax: not a problem,” Hal said, leaning back in his chair. “That’s what we’re going with.”

Bruce pursed his lips. The creature--the _thing_ \--that the Motherbox had described couldn’t responsibly be categorized as ‘not a problem’ without being dead or banished to some unreachable corner of the cosmos. But there were problems like the Joker loose with a canister of sarin, and then there were problems like the inevitable death of the sun. He looked up to find Hal watching him.

“Based on external accounts, the Guardians appear to be containing it effectively. That they’re tolerating a serious flaw in their forces’ security in exchange for containing it this way suggests they don’t have a better method. I can hardly recommend forgetting about it, but unless you have reason to believe circumstances have changed recently?”

Hal shrugged, the tightness of his shoulders betraying his frustration, then shook his head.

“Keep your eyes open, and be as ready as you can in case it becomes a problem,” Bruce said. “But in the short term, we’ll likely have more immediate concerns.”

“Such as?” Hal demanded. “I mean, aside from human-sized mutant bats and the people who won’t stop fighting them.”

“There was a very narrow window for successful reversal of the Langstroms’ condition,” Bruce said evenly. “They couldn’t be left to their own devices without ‘human-sized mutant bats’ becoming a permanent feature of the cityscape and two brilliant researchers spending the rest of their lives as feral animals. I can’t imagine that came up in casual conversation.”

“Carol--who apologizes for yelling at you, incidentally--asked about the deathtrap-to-survivable location ratio in Gotham, so I spent a few minutes catching up on the news. You’ve been busy.” Hal’s tone was borderline accusatory, and Bruce frowned at the idea of Hal carving out time he should have spent sleeping to fret over Gotham’s needlessly sensational tabloid headlines. That they were usually correct in their essentials seemed to be a coincidence, given the editors’ dedication to style over substance. 

“A little more so than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary,” Bruce assured him. After Diana had taken over in Kaznia, things had been frenetic, yes, but no one had been particularly homicidal.

Hal tilted his head. “That’s not a consolation. That’s actually the opposite of a consolation. Please tell me you get that.”

“Things were under control, Hal,” Bruce said. “They’ve been taken care of.” He got to his feet and stifled a wince at the ache in his hip. “I’ll call when I have something more. Like I said, I don’t expect much, but.” He shrugged. “It still needs to be checked on.”

“Stay.” There was a pleading quality to it that surprised Bruce, and Hal looked away, his cheeks coloring. “Just. Stay, please?”

Bruce nodded. “Of course.”

Hal rose and gestured to the couch. “It’s more comfortable than the chairs, I promise.”

The wince hadn’t gone unnoticed, then. He should have known better than to think Hal would miss it.

“Come on,” Hal said, reaching out and taking his hand. “I’m six weeks behind on whatever the League’s been up to. Catch me up.”

Bruce had barely scratched the surface of Wally and Shayera’s ongoing standoff over dirigible privileges before Hal fell asleep. Bruce wrapped an arm around him and held him close, listening to the slow, even sound of his breathing.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and Bruce reluctantly pulled it out, willing it not to be an emergency. He wasn’t entirely certain he could make himself let go of Hal so soon.

The message was from Clark, which was something--he typically called if he genuinely needed assistance, with texts reserved for personal or general-information communiques. Bruce’s brows furrowed. It was a picture of the interior of a fridge--the one in the break room at Mount Justice, a uniquely retro space-age monstrosity that Oliver had donated after deeming it completely unsuitable for use in his personal lair due to ‘aesthetic incompatibility’--completely filled with bottles of sarsaparilla. The text which followed read, “I’m feeling a little attacked right now.”

“Better you than me,” Bruce texted back. Oliver’s investments were turning into a menace in their own right. Clark had seriously underestimated the man’s commitment to offloading the soda at people when he’d confessed to liking it within earshot.

“How’s GL?”

No need at least to ask Clark how he knew where Bruce was, what he was doing. Hal rolled and burrowed more firmly against his side, and Bruce couldn’t help the small smile that crept over his face. Hal would be all right. It would take time, but he would be all right. Bruce couldn’t ask more of the universe right now than that.

“As well as can be expected.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Never Say Never Fanart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4882642) by [BoredBeingRegular](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoredBeingRegular/pseuds/BoredBeingRegular)
  * [Never Say Never Fanart (2)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6784459) by [BoredBeingRegular](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoredBeingRegular/pseuds/BoredBeingRegular)




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